Book Two — Chapter Eight
The Barrens, years before the events of Book One
By midday, Vegetaone had repaired the bag twice. The first repair failed because he had tried to walk while sewing.
The second failed because he had tried to sew while angry.
The third repair held because he finally sat beneath the shade of a crooked acacia tree and admitted that thread did not care how quickly he wanted to reach Camp Taurajo.
He pulled the last stitch tight.
Tested the seam.
Then tested it again.
The bag remained closed.
“Good.”
He stood.
The seam opened.
A strip of linen slowly slid through the hole and dropped into the dust.
Vegetaone stared at it.
“No.”
The Barrens remained unsympathetic. He sat again, folded the torn edges inward, doubled the cloth, and reinforced the damaged section from both sides.
It took longer.
He hated that.
Which probably meant he was doing it correctly. When he finished, he filled the bag and shook it.
Nothing fell out.
“If you break again, I’m leaving you.”
The bag said nothing.
“That includes dramatic timing.”
He continued south.
The Barrens changed slowly.
The grass thinned.
The road emptied.
Trees stood farther apart, and the few travelers he passed moved quickly.
Once, two mounted Horde outriders raced north without slowing.
Vegetaone raised a hand.
Neither answered.
An hour later, he understood why.
He found a quilboar body beside the road.
Fresh.
A narrow blade wound beneath the ribs.
Tracks led into the grass.
Quilboar.
Boots.
Several sets.
Vegetaone crouched.
A younger version of him would already have followed.
He looked instead for what the obvious trail was trying to hide.
There.
Blood in the dust.
A second trail dragged south.
He followed that one.
The survivor lay beneath a thorn bush.
An orc scout. Crossroads markings on his armor. One hand pressed against a wound in his side.
Vegetaone pushed through the branches.
“Can you hear me?”
The scout opened one eye.
“Unfortunately.”
Good.
Talking meant alive.
Usually.
“What happened?”
The scout tried to sit.
Failed.
Vegetaone caught his shoulder.
“Stay down.”
“You a healer?”
“No.”
“Then stop giving healer orders.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I noticed.”
Vegetaone pulled bandages from the repaired bag.
The scout watched him.
“You know what you’re doing?”
“No.”
“That is reassuring.”
“I’ve been injured a lot.”
“That is less reassuring.”
Vegetaone bound the wound as tightly as he dared.
The scout gave his name as Harvek.
His patrol had been watching Thorn Hill. Four scouts. Quilboar movement had become too organized. Too coordinated.
Then Harvek described the man who had been meeting their leaders.
Gray hair.
Dark cloak.
Short sword.
Vegetaone pulled the silver clasp from his bag.
Harvek looked at it and cursed.
“That his?”
“I saw one like it on his cloak.”
“Then this is worse than we thought.”
“What is he doing?”
“Meeting quilboar elders. Showing them routes. Asking questions.”
“About Taurajo?”
“About everything.”
Harvek reached beneath his armor and removed a leather packet stamped with the Horde symbol.
“Take this to Camp Taurajo.”
“What is it?”
“Patrol report. What we saw before they caught us.”
Vegetaone looked at the wound.
“I can get you there.”
“Not before dark.”
“I’ll carry you.”
Harvek laughed, then regretted it immediately.
“You’re limping.”
“It’s improving.”
“Your ribs are wrapped.”
“Also improving.”
“You have blood on your face.”
“That might not be mine.”
Harvek stared.
“That was supposed to help?”
“No.”
Vegetaone hid him in a shallow depression between two rocky rises, left him water and a healing potion, and crouched beside him.
“I’m going to Taurajo.”
“Good.”
“I’m coming back.”
“That part is unnecessary.”
“No.”
Harvek studied him, then nodded once.
“Go.”
Vegetaone took twenty steps and stopped.
Behind him Harvek called, “If I die, burn the bag.”
Vegetaone turned.
“My bag?”
“It offends me.”
Vegetaone pointed at him.
“You are definitely surviving.”
Camp Taurajo appeared near sunset.
The settlement sat open beneath the Barrens sky: tents, kodo pens, fires, hide racks, Tauren guards watching the roads.
Vegetaone had expected walls.
He liked that there were none.
Two spears lowered across his path.
“Name.”
“Vegetaone.”
“Business.”
“Injured Crossroads scout north of here. Harvek.”
The spears lifted immediately.
Within minutes, riders were moving.
No argument.
No questions about whether Harvek was worth the trouble.
They simply went.
Vegetaone liked Camp Taurajo immediately.
The Tauren who took Harvek’s report was older, one horn cut near the tip and beads tied to the other.
Jorn Skyseer.
He read the report twice.
Then looked at the silver clasp.
“Human work.”
“I’ve been following him since Durotar.”
Jorn’s eyes lifted.
“Why?”
Vegetaone opened his mouth.
The answer had changed.
At first, because the man had taken a prisoner.
Then because he asked about patrols.
Then because he appeared in Orgrimmar.
Then the Crossroads.
Now dead scouts.
Vegetaone stared south. “I think he’s building something.”
Jorn looked at him. “An army?”
“No.”
“An alliance?”
“Maybe. But that isn’t it,” Vegetaone said.
Vegetaone thought about the questions.
Names.
Messengers.
Roads.
Supply routes.
Guard rotations.
“He’s testing us.”
Jorn became very still.
“How fast we move,” Vegetaone said. “Where reinforcements come from. Which roads matter.”
Jorn turned Harvek’s report toward him.
One line had been underlined.
They are not preparing to take Taurajo.
Below it:
They are learning how we defend it.
Vegetaone felt cold despite the heat.
The rescue party returned after dark. Harvek was pale, angry, and alive. When he saw Vegetaone, he looked toward the bag.
“Unfortunately, so is that.”
Vegetaone smiled.
Two more riders came behind them.
One carried a wrapped body.
The other carried broken armor.
No one spoke.
The patrol had not all survived. Vegetaone stared at the covered shape. The chase no longer felt like a mystery.
It had names now.
Bodies.
People waiting for riders who would not come home.
Jorn stood beside him.
Jorn folded his arms. “Every answer creates another choice.”
Vegetaone looked south. “Then we go to Thorn Hill.”
Jorn shook his head. “No.”
Vegetaone turned.
“No?”
“We send scouts.”
“He’ll leave.”
“Probably.”
“Then we lose him again.”
“Probably.”
Vegetaone stared.
“How are you calm about that?”
“I am not. I am older.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
“It often is.”
Jorn looked at the silver clasp.
“What does your enemy do when someone follows?”
Vegetaone answered immediately.
“He leads them somewhere.”
Jorn nodded.
The realization irritated Vegetaone.
The watchtower.
The roads.
The Crossroads.
Every time he thought he was catching up, the gray-haired man was ahead of him.
Waiting.
Or leaving something behind.
Maybe Vegetaone had not discovered the trail.
Maybe the trail had been given to him.
The next morning, Jorn sent two scouts south. Borak was one of them, a broad Tauren carrying a mace heavy enough to make Vegetaone reconsider several life choices. Serala was the other, a hunter with a lean wolf named Dust. Vegetaone stood beside them at the gate.
Jorn looked at him.
Jorn looked at Vegetaone. “You are not going.”
Vegetaone looked south. “I am.”
“I could have two guards keep you here.”
“That seems excessive.”
“So does following a man who knows you are following him.”
Borak looked away, hiding a smile.
Vegetaone pointed at him.
“You stay out of this.”
Jorn sighed.
“You will travel with them.”
Vegetaone blinked.
“I thought—”
“I am choosing the version of this bad decision that includes witnesses.”
That felt unfair.
Mostly because it was accurate.
Jorn’s expression hardened.
“If Serala says stop, you stop. If Borak says run, you run. If either says do not attack, you do not attack.”
Vegetaone hesitated.
Jorn’s voice sharpened. “Vegetaone.”
“I heard you.”
“That was not agreement,” Jorn said.
“I will not attack unless they say.”
“Good.”
They reached Thorn Hill by afternoon.
Serala’s wolf found the first tracks.
Too many.
Fresh.
They left the road and followed a dry creek bed between two ridges.
Stone clicking against stone sounded ahead.
Signals.
The three moved carefully.
For once, Vegetaone did not need to be reminded.
Smoke reached them first.
Then voices.
Serala crawled up the bank.
Borak followed.
Vegetaone waited below.
For almost thirty breaths.
Then curiosity won by exactly three steps.
He climbed high enough to see through the grass.
Thorn Hill spread below.
Huts.
Tunnels.
Weapon racks.
Dozens of quilboar.
And at the center of the camp—
The gray-haired stranger.
Alive.
Uninjured.
Talking with three quilboar elders around a table.
A map lay between them.
The stranger pointed north.
Then west.
Then south.
One elder shook its head.
The stranger pointed again, farther south this time.
Serala slid down the bank.
Serala slid down the bank. “We leave.”
Vegetaone looked back. “We found him.”
“That is why we leave,” Serala said.
“We need to hear what they are saying.”
“No.”
Borak descended.
“He’s showing them routes,” Vegetaone whispered.
“Yes.”
“To what?”
“We tell Jorn what we saw.”
Vegetaone looked back toward the ridge.
The stranger had turned.
Not toward the quilboar.
Toward them.
There was no reason he should see anything through the brush.
Still, his face turned directly toward the creek.
Then he smiled.
Vegetaone’s hand moved toward his axe.
Serala caught his wrist.
“No.”
A horn sounded on the far side of Thorn Hill.
Another answered behind them.
Borak swore.
“They knew.”
Serala was already moving.
“Run.”
The creek erupted with quilboar.
Arrows struck the dirt.
Dust barked and spun, teeth flashing.
Serala fired while moving.
Borak shoved Vegetaone forward.
“Faster!”
“I’m injured!”
“You said you were fine!”
“I exaggerated!”
The creek bent ahead.
More quilboar appeared.
Trapped.
Vegetaone searched the bank.
A dark opening hid beneath brush.
“Tunnel!”
Borak entered first.
Serala followed.
Vegetaone backed toward it while a quilboar charged.
He blocked once, shoved the creature away, and ducked inside.
An axe struck the wall behind him.
Earth collapsed across the entrance.
Darkness swallowed them.
Serala sparked a fire stone.
The tunnel continued downward.
Borak looked at Vegetaone.
“You found it.”
“That does not mean I know where it goes.”
The digging behind them grew louder.
Vegetaone looked down the tunnel.
“Down seems good.”
The tunnel became older as they descended.
Wooden supports.
Tool marks.
A buried chamber with a stone floor. At its center stood a rusted iron frame that had once held something circular. Symbols had been carved beneath it.
Most were worn away.
One remained clear.
A circle broken by three lines.
Vegetaone pulled the silver clasp from his bag.
Same shape.
Borak’s expression changed.
“The human.”
Vegetaone nodded.
Serala looked toward the tunnel behind them.
“No.”
She raised the fire stone.
“He wanted us to find this.”
The digging stopped.
Silence.
Then footsteps sounded ahead.
One person.
Slow.
Unhurried.
The gray-haired man’s voice came from beyond the light.
“You learn faster than the others.”
Vegetaone drew his axe.
“Come out.”
A quiet laugh.
“You have been saying that with your feet for weeks.”
“Who are you?”
“Not yet.”
“What do you want?”
“Better.”
The voice shifted somewhere in the darkness.
“What are you doing with the quilboar?” Vegetaone asked.
“Teaching.”
“Teaching them to attack the Horde?”
“Teaching them where the Horde is weak.”
Borak stepped forward.
Serala stopped him with one hand.
Vegetaone stared into the dark.
“Why?”
“Because strength that has never been tested is only a story people tell themselves.”
Vegetaone thought of Harvek bleeding beneath the thorn bush.
The wrapped body at Taurajo.
“That test kills people.”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
No regret.
Something in Vegetaone changed. Until that moment, some part of him had treated the chase like an adventure.
A mystery.
The next hill.
The next clue.
Now he understood something simpler.
The man did not care who died.
Vegetaone stepped forward.
Serala caught his arm.
The stranger laughed.
“There.”
“There what?”
“Every time. You see a problem and step toward it.”
Vegetaone said nothing.
“You mistake movement for action.”
Gornek.
Gadrin.
Jorn.
Different words.
Same lesson.
That made Vegetaone angrier.
“You killed those scouts.”
“No. They followed.”
“Because of you.”
“As did you.”
Metal scraped against stone.
Serala shouted.
“Down!”
A support beam broke.
Earth poured from the ceiling.
Vegetaone hit the floor.
Borak dragged him away from the collapsing wall.
Stone crashed between them and the stranger.
When the dust settled, the tunnel ahead was gone.
Buried.
But a second opening stood behind the iron frame.
The stranger had known another way out.
Of course he had.
Something metallic lay near the rubble.
Vegetaone crouched.
Serala groaned.
“Do not touch it.”
“What if it’s important?”
“Then look without touching.”
A narrow iron token lay in the dust.
Stamped with the broken-circle mark.
And beneath it, one word in Common.
Vegetaone sounded it out.
“Crown.”
Borak looked at Serala.
Neither spoke.
Vegetaone stared at the token.
Another clue.
Another question.
But this time, he understood that following it blindly was exactly what the stranger wanted.
“We take it to Jorn.”
Serala nodded.
“Yes.”
“And then?” Borak asked.
Vegetaone looked toward the tunnel leading away from Thorn Hill.
“Then we decide what it means before we chase anything.”
Borak raised one eyebrow.
Serala smiled faintly.
“That may be the smartest thing you’ve said.”
Vegetaone adjusted his bag.
The strap tore.
He stared at it.
Borak followed his gaze.
“Do not.”
“You were going to say something.”
“I was going to say it mostly held.”
Vegetaone looked at the torn strap.
Mostly held.
He smiled despite himself.
“We fix it when we get back.”
Borak sighed.
“We?”
“You know how to fold the corners.”
Serala started down the tunnel.
“If the quilboar catch us because you two are discussing sewing, I am leaving both of you.”
Dust trotted beside her.
Vegetaone followed.
Behind them, Thorn Hill rumbled with distant movement.
Ahead waited Camp Taurajo.
And somewhere beyond both, the gray-haired stranger was already preparing his next move. Vegetaone no longer wanted to learn from him.
He wanted to stop him.
End of Chapter Eight