WoW Firebrand Pt1 Ch1

Firebrand, Part One, Chapter One: Branded by Fire

Dawn threatened at the edges of a world that stretched far and blue to the horison. The Echo Isles were a jewel green string of pearls sheltering the mainland from the harshness of the sea, and it was over black glass that a hewn wood canoe slipped toward the red beaches of Durotaur. One short paddle broke the water into churning saphires with a musical chime, pushing the shallow vessle gracefully through the water. The figgure propelling the boat sat at the tip of the bow on folded legs, counterbalance to the piled supplies behind.

She was a creature of the ocean, as if her true parents were not the trolls of the Darkspear Tribe, but the fickle elemental gods of the seas. Her skin was the blue of the tropical water with muscles that rippled like waves benieth, manifesed in rings of inked crests that circled her biceps and thighs, bared by torn canvas shorts and a swath of green cloth tied about her chest, stiff with dried salt. Braided hair of midnight sea spilled over strong shoulders and twined with strands of lumpy pearls of hughes of pinks and blues and greens. Strings tied with bits of shell carved into minnows, seahorses, and starfish hung around her neck and abdomen and wove between her braids. A gold stud nestled on the left corner of her broad, flat nose and shimmered in the light like the bright flash of scales on a turning fish, and smooth disks of abalone dripped from her long, batlike ears. Short driftwood ivory tusks parted her lips below eyes the dangerous color of red tide.

Tohbie had no last name. She had done nothing of consequence for her tribe, nor had her husband or parents. The troll felt no regret for that. She was not a warrior. She had no illusions that she was noble, cunning, or fierce, but though she was not destined to be recalled in tales of glory generations in the future, she was at peace with her life. She was fisherman and a hunter when she needed to be, and a wife and mother when she could be. Many people could not claim so much.

She watched the dawn stretch pink fingers across the starry sky toward her destination, and the hull of the canoe slid across the sandbar below. She guided the boat into the reeds choking the red, hilly banks south of the Razor Hill post. They swayed and rustled as they parted before the bow of her vessle, and the boat scraped into the murkey soil trapped by the grass's roots. Tohbie took a long wooden spike and thick hemp cord and bit of red twine from the bottom of the boat and leapt into the sand. She knelt and hauled the boat up where it sat hidden in the reeds, gathering a handful of the grasses and binding them with the red twine to mark her place. The spike drove down past the loose sand into the packed wet earth below. She waded back into the water and hefted each of the heavy woven baskets out of the back of the canoe. With the bundles safely on the beach, she drew a thin metal whistle from its chain about her neck and blew gently into it. The note was high and registered only barely in her long ears as it flashed across the dusky morning.

Tohbie turned from the shore and took the last item from the canoe, the bundled wooden poles and canvas of a colapsable sled. She sat heavily in the sand to assemble it as she waited for her call to be answered. Takk had come across the oceans with her two years prior, but the raptor had proven to be of little use on tiny islands that could be traversed on foot in a matter of hours. And so Tohbie had left the lumbering aged beast on the shores of Durotar where she could hunt the wild pigs there and fend for herself until needed. Even as the last of the sled came into place, she caught the bellowing honk of an excited raptor over the hills.

Takk burst onto the beach with an ungraceful gait that belied her cunning quickness on the hunt. She was fat and sleek, and her eyes were gem bright above rows of needle teeth. She'd obviously done well enough on her own accord. Tohbie greeted her the only way she really understood, pulling back the lid of one of the cases and withdrawing a leaf-wrapped slab of greasy, salted meat. She peeled away it's wrapper and tossed the heavy chunk of boar into the raptors waiting jaws. Takk snapped it out of the air and gulped it down in one smooth movement. While she stood contemplating the contentment of digestion, Tohbie strapped the harness of the sled about Takk's neck and began loading it.

Tohbie slapped an open palm against Takk's scaley flank. The raptor honked and began her slow rolling lumber toward the northbound road beyond the red hills. It would be a four hour walk to Razor Hill. There had been nothing there but an inaccessable plateu when the ships had made their landing on the shores of Kalimdor. Surrounded by thick thorny brambles with spines the length of a grown man's arm, the mesa had been named long before any motions of a settlement had been made.

Razor Hill the settlement was not terribly impressive, though there had been more of it every visit Tohbie made. Her visits had become more frequent over the past year, and would become more frequent as time went on. It was a military establishment after all, and armies marched on their stomachs. It fetched a fair ammount of coin to make the trip, and as the settlement prospered, so did her family, but she regretted all the time spent on the mainland adding to that spent out in the jungle or on the water. She consoled herself that she was, at her best, a passable parent. And with two living parents by the age of three, Khole was ahead of the curve for their species. Tohbie herself had lost her father before her memories had set, shot through the heart by a poisoned Bloodscalp arrow. Her mother had died when she was six seasons old, ripped to pieces by the Saltscale Murlocks that rampaged up and down the coast of the Vile Reef and the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale where the Darkspears had made their home. Tohbie had been left in the care of her mother's husband, who had himself died of fever from a festering snakebite three years later. When Tohbie had boarded one of the great ships bound for Kalimdor, husband in tow, infant son in her arms, she'd been orphaned from three sets of parents, and had only one sibling of four left to her. Compared to that, Khole growing up with one absent parent seemed almost idilic.

They walked in outward silence together, Tohbie's three-digited hand resting on Takk's rough shoulder. Her fingers dislodged several flakey white scales to reveal the bright purple benieth. The sun lifted sleepily above the horizon and began it's leasurly cruise into the sky as two old friends in a better world walked benieth.



Tohbie didn't announce herself as she entered the camp. The orcs were accostomed to their presence after months of deliveries. No wall ringed the camp yet, and it was indeed larger than it had been the visit before. Perminent structures were beginging to take shape, and the camp rung with the sound of saws and hammers, though most of the structures were still tents of oiled canvas. Nestled up against the hills on either side of the northbound path were the cut stone blocks of foundations for something Tohbie supposed would soon be impressive, and high above on Razor Hill itself, piles of wooden beams floated in from the Echo Isles were slowly assembled into a watchtower.

Grosk hailed her before she located him in the bustle of great, hulking, and green-skinned orcs. One of the few civilians in Razor Hill, Grosk was loud and happy. He oversaw the purchases and distribution of the supplies to the camp, and so it was he the Tohbie was familiar with. She gave him a wide smile and raised one hand in greeting as they met near the center of the chaos.

"Tohbie! Just the troll I was hoping to see!" Grosk boomed, his exuberent voice rolling over Tohbie's response. "It's great to see you this fine morning! How's your son? Gotten him a dog yet? Boy's best friend is a dog! Had a dog myself as a boy!"

Tohbie drew the raptor up beside them and looked the supplymaster up and down shrewdly. "Grosk? Am I to take it you got yourself a dog you need to unload?"

"Five!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "Five yapping, howling, hungry, nipping little beasts!"

"An' I want one o' dose why?"

"Sweet wonderful little things, they are! Every family needs a dog!"

Tohbie smirked and unstrapped the two baskets from the sled, freeing Takk from the harness. She gave the raptor a slap on the rump and sent her lumbering back out of Razor Hill, free again until she required her for the next run. "I s'pose I gotta ask why you got dogs a'fore you wanna pay me for dese?"

"Terrible thing! Some tauren comes through here two days ago and the moment he's gone there's this horrible cartterwalling from behind the training grounds like he figgured if he left them some place noisy no one would notice, and we didn't notice until he was long gone! And who do you think ended up in charge of the crate full of beasts? Me, that's who!"

"Oh?"

"I thought you being a family woman and all, who better to take one of the little guys? You have a son, little boys love dogs!"

"How much mange do dey have?"

Grosk affected a deeply hurt look. "Are you implying they haven't been in the best of care under my watch?"

Tohbie folded her arms over her chest with a smile. A few of the others on the Echo Isles had dogs. They had never been a part of their culture until they'd left Stranglethorn. Most of the things that thrived there had been less than personable, and so pets were largely a new phenomina, but she couldn't deny the few children on the isles were enamored by the cats and dogs and rabbits that had slowly filtered into their midst. And a dog might be a good  reminder that Khole was in her thoughts while she was gone, at least once he was old enough to appreciate such things. "Okay, I ain't promisin' nuttin, but lets see dem. Den we talk `bout prices for my shipment."

Grosk smiled a toothy grin and beconed her after him. She followed after him through the maze of tents and even over the din of the work going on she could hear puppies howling and yapping. In a large open space near the back of the camp and covered  by a stretched tarp to block the sun was a large wooden crate. Tohbie stopped beside it with the orc and peered into it's contents.

"Grosk, you no good liar!"

"What?"

Tohbie reached into the crate and lifted out a fat, squirming handful of wolf cub. "Dis look like a dog to you?"

"Dog, wolf, what's the difference? Boy's best friend is a wolf! Had a wolf myself as a boy!"

Kicking all four paws wildly, the little brown cub arched it's back and happily snapped it's sharp little milkteeth at Tohbie's ears. "He already try to eat me!"

"She's already trying to eat you."

Tohbie frowned and turned the wolf around in her hands to consider it more closely. It squirmed and squeeked as it tried to alternatly lick and bite any part of her within reach. She had laughing amber eyes and her mouth was quirked in a wide, fangy smile. Her wet, black nose snuffled eagerly until she sneezed in Tohbie's face. The troll blinked once and sighed, hefting the puppy onto her shoulder. "Fine. I will take her. But if in de morning I am eaten before I can leave, you take her back. You do not send de troll-eating dog back to me family!"

Grosk smiled while Tohbie searched her pockets for another bit of twine. It wouldn't do to not be able to tell it from the others now that it was a family member.



Tohbie wondered if people were granted a special power when they became parents, the one that tickled at the back of one's neck when they were needed. Certainly, her thrid mother never had it, as her toddler sister had perished when she'd walked into the ocean unattended and been pulled out with the undertow. But Tohbie had it. She'd woken once in the night with the distinct need to run to Khole's crib in time to drive a daggar through the pointed head of a viper slithering in through the window over his cradle. The same tickle in the back of her neck that had woken her to see to the snake woke her again as she lay on a thin mat benieth the night sky in Razor Hill. She blinked and shifted. Patches, as she'd deemed the cub, yawned and stood up on her chest. Somewhere in the distance, a storm was brewing. She could hear the distant thrum of thunder.

Tohbie pushed Patches off and sat up, looking around in confusion. Razor Hill was quiet. Fires crackled, and a few people spoke in hushed conversational tones. Nothing at all seemed amiss, but Tohbie stood anyway. Maybe she should start for home early, before first light. It would be bast to get over the water before the distant storm rolled in. She snapped her fingers and Patches followed readily. By the time she was at the last of the tents, she realised she was jogging. Something was wrong. By the time she hit the beaten road, she was running. Patches was flagging behind and without breaking stride, she reached down to scoop the little animal up. Cradeling Patches in one arm, she fumbled for the whistle around her neck. If Takk had run back to her preferred hunting grounds, she might be too far away to hear the call, but one tense moment brought the loud hooting cry of a raptor who was thankfully too lazy to travel back to the beach right away.

Takk burst out of the thorny succulents lining the path and ran beside her. Reaching up for one of the raptor's dull horns, she was momentarily afraid it had been too long to do this again. Takk hadn't been ridden in years, and she was without a saddle, but Takk threw her head the moment Tohbie had her grip, hurling the troll into her back as if it was only yesterday she'd been back in the jungles biding her time until she was called to spirit away from danger Tohbie and her kin. Unlike the orcs' wargs and the humans' horses, raptors were shockingly intelegent, able even to understand Tohbie's words beyond simple voice commands. Wrapping one arm around Takk's neck, Patches gripped to her breast, Tohbie fought to hold steady to the racing raptor. There was something odd about the sound of the thunder. It didn't roll or growl. It boomed, steady and low.

"De boat, Takk! De boat!"

Takk snorted and lowered her blocky head, charging down the road at a ground eating pace, the loping waddle that had brought them to Razor Hill so forgotten she may have never thought to go so slowly. Tohbie wasn't hearing thunder. No clouds marred the clear sky, and the thrumming boom was a quickly quickening metronome. Her teeth rattled painfully against her tusks and she shut her eyes to ward off the kicked dust Takk's great talons hurled into the air. When they ground to a halt, everything hurt from the jarring ride. Takk had crested the hill over the shoals Tohbie had met her at the day before.

"Good girl!" Tohbie gasped, scrabbling from her back and dropping Patches beside her. Takk hopped sideways, honking nervously.

Tohbie squinted toward the Echo Isles, but the thick forest of palms stretching out into the water that hemmed in the white sand shoals she'd hidden her boat in blocked her view across the waters. She picked up her pace, cresting the red, stoney hill, and sliding down it's far slope. She stumbled slightly as the hard clay turned abruptly to loose white sand benieth her feet, and the knot of worry in her belly intensified. She took the beach in leaps and bounds toward the stand of yellow reeds she'd left marked with a bit of red twine. As her toes sunk into the shallow and slightly muddy water, she heard Patches barking behind her. In her haste, she'd forgotten the small puppy, who scrabbled frantically after her. Pausing for just a moment to reach back and scoop the small creature out of the water as it splashed up to her, the troll threw asside the reeds to reveal the canoe gently bobbing in the shallows. Tohbie dropped the squirming wolf cub into the little wooden craft in the same motion she ripped away the cord binding it to the shore, and leaped into the boat. It rocked dangerously as she scrabbled for the short oar and used it to heave the boat away from the shore.

Patches barked and whined fearfully and crawled under the oiled canvass at the far side of the boat from the troll as Tohbie cleared the reeds. The scrubby shoals fell away to reveal the azure blue expanse of the Great Sea and the Echo Isles to the East. At first she thought that the sillouette of the isles were cast by the rays of the rising morning sun, but then she saw what it really was, and the oar slipped from her fingers. The Echo Isles were burning.

Tohbie snatched up the oar again and dug it into the warm, tropical water, throwing the canoe toward her home and family. She wondered in the back of her mind what could cause the wet, tropical islands to catch so completely aflame when she saw the human ship sail from behind the quickly crumbling palms in the distance. It didn't matter. Amon and their son were on the Isles. If Sargaris himself were laying waste to her village, her bow would be pointed just as surely homeward. The boats boomed a steady 'thrum thrum thrum' of projectiles into the shores on the eastern beaches. With Tohbie crouched in a low boat skimming toward the western shores, only accident would endanger her before she reached the jungle. The sea cruised benieth her at a blinding speed, but the trip was the longest she knew she'd ever take. The bottom of her boat began skimming the high sand bars as she approached the largest of the island string. Upon who's eastern shore her family made her home. Tohbie forced the thought from her mind as she drove the canoe up onto the beach and leaped into the sand, dragging it further up out of the damp waterline. Patches leaped out after her, hovering near her feet.

"No, dog!" Tohbie admonished hastily, pushing the cub back toward the boat with her foot and leaping toward the sparse edge of the jungle. "Stay!"

As she dove through the patchy brush and into the darkness of the tropical forest, she ignored the small puppy struggling in her wake. Tohbie had grown up in the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale. The Darkspear Trolls were masters of the jungle, because if they weren't, they were dead. The tiny tribe was on the verge of extinction when Thrall sailed through the Vale toward Kalimdor, hanging on by a fingernail and hemmed in on every side by the Bloodscalp Tribe in a cursed jungle pressed against a sea teeming with frenzied murlocks. Tohbie and Amon had been one of many to follow their leader, Vol'Jin, across the sea with the young Warchief. To safety, she had only that previous day reminded herself.

She could smell the smoke from the fires, but asside from the overpowering booms, the jungle was earily quite outside her labored breaths. The birds that usually screached overhead had long since fled, and those creatures that couldn't take to wing had taken to ground. The crackle of the fire and any other sounds that might be coming from the village were lost in the dense greenery. Tohbie's adrenaline was begining to lag. It had carried her over a quarter mile of sea, through deep sand, and into a jungle that reached out with roots and vines and fallen logs. Her lungs burned, and the numbness that shielded her muscles from the strain of her flight was falling away, but she didn't slow, crashing through the thick foliage now rather than dodging it. The heat abruptly intensified, scouring away the tropical steam as tounges of flame licked up here and there from charred craters in the black soil. A whistling howl tore toward her and a trunk to her right blew apart in a spray of splinters. Tohbie yelped as a wooden sliver cut into her hip, but didn't slow. She could hear the crackle of fire on thatched roofs and the yells of villagers. Some were shouting orders, others were simply screaming in pain. Overhead she heard the shriek of bat riders, first one, then another, then the overwhelming leathery flapping of a full pack hurling toward the ravaged coast, and mercifully, the rythmic crash of cannons faltered.

Light and noise signalled the jungle's end, and Tohbie's unstrung bow was in her hand even as she spilled into the morning sunlight. The village was in flames. While it seemed some huts at the jungle's edge had escaped the fires, all had suffered under the assult from the warship floating just off the shallows. It's cannons now began pounding again, this time into the swarms of bat riders diving down toward it and the other half dozen she could see beyond the shore. The Darkspears scattered in dissaray. Some ran into blazing homes to rescue those trapped inside, others took up arms against the green-tuniced humans spilling out of longboats with swords and shields. Her bow was already strung and a handful of blue-fletched arrows driven into the ground before her as she was noticed.

Tohbie still carried the cross-notched arrows she had in the Vale, when she was just as likely to come afoul of a Bloodscalp as a panther while out hunting, but her arrowheads were stone, not meant to penetrate plate and mail. The human rushing her threw up his shield as she brought her bow to bear, and a moment of panic struck her. From that distance, from that angle, she only had one shot. The arrow sailed from her fingers with a reasuring twang, and it was in the hands of fate and watever accursed gods might be watching over this massacre. A flash of saphire blue sailed over the lip of the soldier's shield, stone sparked on metal, and red welled up like a flower where the human male's eye had been. The force threw his head back, and the second arrow slid through his jaw up into his skull. His body dropped like a ragdoll into the sand, sword and shield rolling from his limp, gloved hands. Tohbie had never killed a human before, had only been aware of them in the most basic of senses until they'd sided with the Warchief's Horde. Why they had turned on them, she couldn't begin to understand. Further why the solders' tunics were emblazoned with Jaina Proudmoore's white anchor of Theramoore. It was something she'd consider once she had her family with her again. Beyond the fallen marine, another human clashed with a pale troll fisherman she vaugly recalled having argued with over fishing spots on one occasion. His spear shattered under the force of the heavy sword, but as the human raised it again for a killing blow, Tohbie saw the plates in his armor part to reveal the sweat-stained shirt undernieth. Tohbie's third arrow drove into his armpit up to it's fletching, piercing the warrior's heart. He spasmed and fell silently as the pale troll dove out of his way.

"Lau! Me family!" Tohbie yelled over the roar of the fires.

He turned toward her, snatching up the head of his broken spear. "I don' know!" he yelld back. "I ain't seen dem!"

Tohbie nodded, snatching up her arrows from the dirt before her, and bolting past Lau'Tiki to the opposite edge of the village. She didn't look to see where he had gone, or any of the other villagers for that matter. They were none of her conscern until her young son was in her arms and her husband was beside her. She took the path through the worst of the fires where the fighting was the sparsest. Heat and smoke assulted her from every side, settling across her shoulders like a suffocating wool blanket. Pillars of red flame reached skyward to either side like she walked a path through the the home of the Burning Legion iteslf. Tohbie snarled around her tusks and threw herself forward despite the heat, pressing toward her home, unwilling to let herself consider that it might already be in the same state as the ones feeding the fire around her. Knocking another arrow as she leaped from the flaming ally, Tohbie's heart sank.

The small hut she and Amon had built by the shore crackled and burned, lurching slightly now and then as one ruined wall began crumbling under it's own weight.

"Amon!" Tohbie called frantically, letting her weapon drop to her side and rushing forward. "Amon, where are you?!"

The three steps that lead up to the raised wooden platform that made up the floor of her home crumbled under her weight, and Tohbie grunted as she pulled herself up. The very floor itself smoldered, but she ignored the burns biting into her hands and knees as she pulled herself up, up into the inferno that had once been a place of joy and laughter. Burning thatch rained fine red embers down like snowflakes that hissed into ash as they fell onto her skin. Soot mixed with the sweat on her face and fell into her eyes as she fought her way inside, ducking benieth the smoke. She fell over somthing metal lying motionless on the floor, striking away the sweat from her eyes to see a Theramore solder lying lifeless on the burning planks, a throwing knife through his eye. She reached out and wrenched it from his skull. She would be able to see no one coming in the smoke in time to use her bow if she must. It came loose with a grinding crunch, and Tohbie clenched it in her fist as she struggled deeper into the house. A heavy footstep fell beside her and she whirled, striking out clumsily with the small knife. A massive green hand engulfed her forearm and she found herself looking up at an orc wearing the livery of Orgrimar.

"What are you doing?" he yelled over the din. "You'll miss the evacuation!"

Tohbie struggled against his iron grip. "Me husband!" she cried out.

The orc looked at something down on the ground beside them and shook her roughly. "You can't help him now! Come with me!"

"What do you-" Then Tohbie saw the flash of blue below the smoke, and followed the grunt's gaze down. Red, sticky blood marred Amon's dark blue skin. A great crushing blow had smashed his chest inward, leaving it a messy gaping crater of steaming blood and organs. Tohbie's whole body went ridged, her red eyes widening in horror. "No!"

Tohbie's yell was cut off as the orc wrapped a massive paw around her mouth and forcably lifted her from the ground and hurled her back out the door into the sand. Tohbie rolled like a thrown toy out into the fresh air and slid to a stop coughing and gasping, the world shockingly fridged in comparison to the bonfire she'd been hurned from. The orc leaped out of the ruins after her, reaching down to grab her arm and haul her up to her feet.

"We have to go! Now!" he bellowed.

Tohbie pointed back to the small house they'd just vacated desperatly, at the second floor where her son's nursery was. "Please! Me son-!" was all she managed to gasp before the destroyed wall finally gave way. The hut lurched, beams cracked, and the entire second story crashed into the flames below so violently it drove itself through the charred raised floor and into the sand below.

Tohbie barely had time to process what she'd just seen when her world was eclipsed in a deafening roar. Her vison went white as the explosion rocked the beach. She felt herself being thrown, felt her savior let go of her arm. Then everything she knew was blackness and a slowly fading ringing, punctuated by the far-away sound of a scared wolf cub crying. Tohbie spared her last thought for her son's dog. Please, she prayed, let someone pick that poor stupid dog up as they leave...



She felt like she was floating. Her eyes were closed and she couldn't force them open, and none of her senses were working terribly well. Sound faded in and out like she was hearing voices through the water. She felt numb all over, and might have been laying on a cold stone floor or a queen's down bed. She could smell nothing through the dried blood in her nose. Her thoughts slipped from her like minnows escaping her fingers in the shallows. Only her mouth registered a constant sensation: the sharp metalic tang of her own blood. There was pressure and warmth on her face, and then a blinding light. She saw brown and black that might have been something familiar, and heard sounds that might have been a voice. The pressure left, and everything went black again. She gratefully sunk back into unconsciousness.



Very suddenly and very violently, Tohbie was torn from blissful sleep by a very pressing sensation. Everything itched; her arms, legs, stomach and face screamed with the maddening desire to scratch. She itched right down to the places that couldn't be scratched, a kind of bone-deep, benieth the skin itch. She would swear later that even her hair itched in that first moment of real consciousness. She woke with a grunt, clawing blindly at her skin. She felt bandages wrapped around her forearms and torso, and a spot that felt like it had been stitched. She tried to force her brain to make some kind of sense of the situation when large, warm hands wrapped firmly around her wrists and set them back at her sides.

"None of that, now," a deep but somehow feminine voice chided softly. "You're not leaving with any more scars than you need to. You'll give me a bad name."

Tohbie forced her eyes open laboriously. A massive animal face filled her vision. She gasped, and the face above her broke into a smile. Covered in short, coarse brown fur, the woman standing over her was most certainly neither a troll, nor and orc. Her wide nose sat high on a short muzzle, over a mouth of flat, square teeth. Huge brown eyes studdied her from below a thick mane of black hair crowned by dull white horns. What little of her vision was not taken up by the woman's face was filled with her massive, leather-draped shoulders. Tohbie wondered when she'd overcome the strange appearence of the tauren as easily as she overcame the orcs.

"Healer?" she rasped.

"I am. My name is Vira Younghoof. I should make a habbit of working on your people more often. When my appentice fished you out of the Great Sea, we weren't even sure what you were under all your injuries, but you turned back into a troll relatively quickly." The tauren chuckled to herself and began carefully checking Tohbie's bandaging. "No one here knew your name. My apprentice has been calling you Firebrand. The burns on your feet might be the only scars you carry from that explosion with you." The healer stood with another motherly smile. "You continue to heal well. I'm afraid, though, that I have many patients after that battle. I will send my apprentice to see after you and bring you some food and water."

Tohbie nodded weakly and sunk back into what she now identified as a thin mat resting directly on hard-packed dirt. As Vira stepped away, she tried to get her barings. There was a canvas above her, some kind of walless tent to keep the sun off of the injured patients. There were many other people, she saw. She recognised most of them; a few trolls from her village and many more orcs from Razor Hill. She was able to see how no one was around to tell the healer her name. Everyone around seemed to be in somewhat worse shape than herself. The red dirt benieth their pallates told her they were still in Durotar, at least, and the hint of humidity in the air said they weren't as far north as Orgrimar. The sun was starting to sink below the hills to the west. Heavy footsteps plodded up to her side and stopped. Tohbie looked up at a gangly male taurin, a smile threatening at her lip as she considered that maybe teenagers or every race suffered from being outgrown by their hands and feet. The boy kept his red mane clipped short, and it was so stiff it stood nearly on end around his stubby black horns. He held a cord of wood and a leather bundle under one skrawney arm, a heavy waterskin over his opposite shoulder, and a wooden plate and bowl in his hand. He knelt down and set his burden in the dirt, offering her the plate, which she saw was full of some kind of charred meat and boiled tubers. She accepted it gratefully as he filled the cup from the waterskin and set the leather bundle beside her.

"My name is Chakk Stoneward," he said. "I'm Vira's apprentice. She told me to make sure you got some food and water and anything else you needed."

"Me name..." she said, clearing her throat and reaching for the water, "Me name is Tohbie." She looked down at her feet for the first time and saw they were, indeed, badly scarred by the burns she's recieved running into her burning home. She swallowed and tore a peice of meat from the plate in half between her fingers, toying with it. "Vira say me new name is Firebrand, eh?" she asked with a pained smile.

Chakk sat down beside a firepit nearby and picked at the bindings of the cord of wood. "I had to call you something," he said sheepishly. He stirred the coals in the fire pit and threw a few of the logs on.

"Where are we? How long... was I asleep?" she asked, peeling fibers off the blackened bit of meat and forcing herself to eat at least the little bits she flaked off though she still felt no desire to eat. She looked down at the bag he'd left beside her, and saw her bow sticking out from under the tanned leather.

"We're just outside Razor Hill. Vira and I came here from Mulgore two days ago, but we think the battle you were injured in was the day before. I found you washed up in the rocks where the stone outcropping butts up against the beach." The fire blazed to life with a 'whoosh,' and he smiled with pride at his work. He turned back and saw her looking at the wrapped bundle. "Your things. At least, I think they are. They were in the rocks not far away."

Tohbie pushed back the leather and let her fingers travel over the contents. Her bow, her small steel hatchet, and Amon's knife. Tohbie squinted. It wasn't Amon's knife. Her husband's weighted throwing knives were much heavier, with wooden handles. She'd bought them in Booty Bay as a gift to him when they'd been married. She would have known them anywhere. The throwing knife she was holding was made of one solid piece of stamped metal. Her dark blue brows knit as she considered it. Someone else was in her home before her.

Chakk looked at her strangely. "What's the matter?"

"De odder trolls..." she said slowly. "Did dey... did you see one a dem wit a little boy? He have... blue skin. Hair like dis." she pointed to her own skin and hair. "T'ree years old-" she stopped, realising that a three-year-old taurin might look significantly different than a three-year-old troll. She held out her hands a few feet apart. "Dis big."

Chakk considered for a moment and shook his head. "No. I haven't seen any trolls that small, but I could have easily missed him in all the confusion. What did the rest of his family look like?" Tohbie's face fell, and he realised his mistake. She'd pointed to herself for coloration. "I thought you had been a soldier," he faltered.

Tears welled up in Tohbie's red eyes. "I fish," she said softly. "I hunt. Me husband ma-made fishin' spears an' nets. We- we was just people!"

She sobbed once, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. As she set the plate aside, Chakk reached out to place one massive hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I didn't mean to upset you. Don't cry. Maybe..." He patted her shoulder to snap her back into paying attention. "Maybe he left before Vira and I came here. Most of the trolls were already gone. I've barely seen more than the few who've been injured. Hey." He patted her to keep her focus again, and Tohbie looked up at him with pained eyes. "They set up a camp just outside of the gates. We even sent your dog along there with some of those leaving."

"Me dog?" Tohbie choked softly.

"She had a yellow ribbon tied around her neck," he said. Tohbie sniffled and nodded. "She was sitting next to you when I found you. And she kept climbing all over you while Vira bandaged you." He smiled. "Even when I stepped on her, she didn't learn to get out of the way. Vira had someone take her with them to the camp so she wouldn't be underfoot. I don't know about anyone else, but I know she's there waiting for you."

Tohbie smiled and coughed out a laugh. "You will be a good doctor," she said quietly.

He smiled. "I hope so. Tomorrow at dawn, Grosk will be sending some supplies their way. I'm sure he'll let you ride along in one of the wagons. First though," he reached around her and handed her back her plate, "Vira told me to make sure you eat."



The wagon lurched as it's wooden wheel bounced over a pothole, and Tohbie winced. She knew it wasn't the fault of the kodo pulling the massive wagon. He was so big that the concept that he was even capable of aknowledging the potholes was laughable, but after six hours traveling north through Drygulch Canyon and it's fabulous collection of potholes, she was fairly sure that she would never travel by kodo again. She was sure, though, that it was better than walking. Even making it the short few yards to Razor Hill had been agony as the stones dug into her burned feet. Two other trolls made the journey with her, but she didn't know them. They were bat riders, and though she recognised them from as far back as her childhood, it was the first they'd made actual introductions. Sol'mai was going to search for news on his brother who had been flying beside him when a cannon ball beheaded Sol'mai's bat and sent him tumbling into the ocean. Dour Riagen was even more dour than Tohbie supposed was usualy due to the loss of his left arm from cannon fire. His bat, Duul, had escaped unscathed, and sat grumpily in the wagon with her, now and then breaking into their conversation with an irritable chittering to remind Riagen that it enjoyed the ride no more than Tohbie. Riagen was in no position to return to the fight as a bat rider until his arm grew back. He was going to rejoin the war effort in whatever capacity it would have him, and Duul was to be on loan to Sol'mai should he choose to "do the right thing and get back in the sky."

"(I dun unnerstan why de Jaina hoomon do dis)," Sol'mai said. His orcish was terrible, and even Tohbie, who had been more or less fluent in the language for years, had a hard time understanding him.

"[Because humans are stupid creatures, no smarter than murlocs]," Riagen grumbled in thier native tongue. Like Tohbie, he knew, or at least understood, a good number of languages, but refused to speak any but their own.

Tohbie, herself, was fluent in the common language, and compitent enough with orcish that once someone got past her thick accent, her words were understandable. She had learned both on the long journey to Kalimdor. Many of the orcs on the boat with her and Amon had known both their native orcish language and the humans' who had kept them as slaves for so long. She had agreed to speak orcish with Sol'mai over the long journey once Raigen had grudgingly admitted that he could follow the conversation so long as they didn't "chatter on in that damned pinkskin speak."

"(No)," Tohbie replied slowly, paying careful attention to use her words exactly as the orcs had taught her for Sol'mai's benifit. "(Humans is... are smart. I have seen dem in Booty Bay. Dey are smart like goblins. Dey trade an' dey build complicated tings. An' dey train animals. Murlocs can't do dat.)"

"[The only thing they have over murlocs is their penchant for lies,]" he snorted back. "[Just like a murloc, they abuse the resourses around them and kill anything that isn't their own. The damned murlocs at least stab you in the face right off. Pinkskins, though, know they can use you for all you're worth before they stab you in the back.]"

Sol'mai looked quizzically at the one-armed troll beside him, then to Tohbie. Tohbie just closed her eyes and shrugged. She'd defend them in that they were smarter than the fishmen who'd nearly overwhelmed them by their sheer ability to breed, but she was not in a state of mind to propose they had anything resembling morals. Part of her piped up in the back of her mind that she knew Jaina Proudmoore was a good person, if simply because she had total faith in Thrall and his word. If someone could be raised a slave by a people and still point out the nobility of one of their race, she supposed they warrented the faith. But Jaina was not her people. Sometimes leaders did what their people wanted, not what they knew was right.

"(De Jaina hoomon, she is da magics, yeah?)"

"(Jaina can use magic, yes)," Tohbie said. "(Thrall says she is much more powerful den de odder mages wit' de humans.)"

Sol'mai knit his brows in deep thought for a moment. "(Den why's we here?)" he asked.

Riagen looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "[Because we need to stop them as soon as possible before they kill us all.]"

"(I say wrong)," Sol sighed. "(How I say...)" He leaned toward Tohbie and repeated his words in their native tongue.

Tohbie nodded. "(If Jaina is so powerful, more of us should be dead)," she said for him. She nodded again, this time in agreement.

"(Jaina did not fight us)," Sol'mai added. Even Raigen grudgingly nodded to that.

The kodo pulling the wagon yanked the wheel into another pothole so deep Tohbie lifted off the floor of the wagon with an "oof!" and Duul lifted up on his wings to look directly as Raigen and screech his displeasure. The massive bat heaved up onto the wagon's railing, chittering at his handler so loudly that they almost missed the orc yelling back at them that they were coming out of the canyon. Tohbie turned to look behind her in the direction the wagon was heading to see the canyon walls drop away into a flat expanse of lush, red desert. Orgrimar was larger than she thought it would be, or she assumed it would be when it was built. Huge tree trunks were lashed together to form the framework of the great stone wall that would soon pen the city in as securly as the towering sheer cliffs it was built into. In the distance, she could see orcs heaving huge stone blocks up rough-hewn ramps so far away they looked like ants carrying pebbles. She had to catch her breath at the sight of a city so impossibly large. Not so long ago, she had been part of a comunity that had lost it's ability to breed fast enough to overcome its mortality rate. How could the humans think to provoke such a great thing as this?

Beside the wide road leading into the city's gates, a city of tents sprawled lazily in the sun. She could see flashes of teal, azure, and sky blue among the tents mixed with the browns and greens of the orcs. Tohbie fell silent, squinting into the crowds. The two trolls beside her seemed unconcerned with either the massive undertaking or the refugee camp.

"(Duul gone t'row me off an' eat me livin' flesh)," Sol'mai was saying.

"[Nonsense. He's as gentle as a kitten]."

"(Dis is my stop)," Tohbie said, shifting to jump down from the wagon.

Sol'mai, who had picked her up and put her on the wagon despite her protests that morning, was faster than her once again, grabbing her under the arms and setting her gently on the path accepting her resigned thanks as he handed her her walking stick. Tohbie wished the both of them luck and dug the stick into the ground, trying to take as much of her weight off her feet as she could as she hobbled toward the tents. She looked about at the bustle as she approached, bewildered. Then a familiar face burst from the crowd.

Patches greeted her with a high, reedy bark, carging from amidst the feet of the refugees. Tohbie knelt and caught her as she leaped into her arms, wriggling and licking her face with every leap upward.

"Silly dog," she said quietly. "We's only just met. What'cho thinkin'?"

Two young children burst out from between the adults after Patches. The little boy was an orc she'd never seen before, and the girl a skinny troll who had been with her on the journey across the sea. They stopped when they saw the wolf cub in Tohbie's arms.

"Aw!," the little boy cried in dismay. "You're her person!"

"Aw!" the troll echoed.

Tohbie smiled slightly. "I guess I am. Patches been a good dog?"

The orc nodded. "Yes, ma'am. We teached her to sit."

"Me name is Tohbie. I remember you, Leeta, but I don't know you." She turned to the young boy. "Are you from Razor Hill?"

"No. I'm from there," he said, pointing to the great walls of Orgrimar. "My name's Bixxle. I live with Matron." He took Leeta's hand protectively. "Leeta's my new sister!" he added proudly.

Tohbie was happy to hear the subtext of "and I'll beat anyone who teases her to a bloody pulp." Sadder news was that Matron was likely the matron of an orphanage. She smiled reasuringly at Leeta. "I t'ink you have a good brudder, Leeta," she said softly. "Do you remember me little boy, Khole?"

Leeta nodded.

"Have you seen him?" she said, fighting not to sound too urgent and frighten the child. "Is he maybe wit' Matron, too?"

Leeta shook her head and Tohbie's heart dropped. "No, 'ma'am. Der ain't no babbies at Matron's. Maybe Mister Kruk knows where he is."

"Mister Kruk's the one what keeps everone's names what's comming and going," Bixxle added.

Leeta nodded in agreement. "We can take you to him!"

Tohbie set Patches on the ground and stood slowly with her stick. "I'd like dat. But you two go slow, aye? I got me a bad limp."

Leeta reached up to take Tohbie's free hand and lead her into the camp. "How did you hurt your feet, Tohbie?"

She stepped gingerly behind the two. "I... burn dem in de fire," she murmured.

"But you was in Razor Hill! Did you come back?"

Tohbie stumbled a little as she looked around at the camp that had been set up in the last few days. The tents, for the most part, looked like simple shelters. A few had fire pits, and fewer still had closable doors. Most of the settlement was out in the open air; places seemingly used for cooking meals and exchanging goods. She saw trolls salting and hanging fish and pelts, distributing food and meats from the nearby farms, and weaving blankets from scraps of cloth. There was no exchange of currency going on that she could see, and no luxuries and trinkets. Everyone was just trying to survive.

"Yes. I came back," she said finally.

"Why?"

"To try to help me family. I been tryin' to find Khole for many days."

"Did you find Amon?"

Tohbie sighed quietly. "No, honey. Amon, he die in de fire."

"My mom and dad die in de fire, too," Leeta said sadly.

Bixxle had picked up Patches and was holding her against his chest. "Demons killed my mom and dad," he offered. "Do you have a mom and dad, Tohbie?"

Tohbie shook her head. "Me mom and dad die a long time ago, when I was littler den eider of you. Dat's why I need to find me son. He's me only family." Of course simply being his mother was the real reason she needed to find her son, but the two children probably couldn't sympethise with that situation as easily.

"If you're an orphan, you could come live with Matron and be our sister!" Bixxle said. "Then you'd have lots of family!"

Grim as it was, Tohbie allowed herself to appreciate the gallows' humor of the situation and chuckled. "Grownups can't be orphans, little one."

"Der's Kruk!" Leeta cried out, pointing.

Kruk, it seemed, was an ancient old orc so covered in scars she could barely tell where the knotted tissue ended and his excessive wrinkles began. He sat upon a three-legged wooden chair in front of a simple, but very wide desk littered with ledgers, notes, and an impressive collection of quills. People came and went hurriedly from the table, some passing and taking away papers, some apperently asking after people. All were promptly met with Kruk's wheezy, conscise responses. "Ah, yes, very good." "Nono, we have plenty of that, but if you could take this back to your master?" "Yes, it's already on it's way." "Of course. She's right over there. Thirty paces that way, left at the second tent. Ten more paces. Can't miss her."

Tohbie swallowed and let go of Leeta's hand as she hobbled up to Krunk, who's nose stayed burried in his ledger, quill pen bobbing like lightlning, shifting only to push his tiny reading glasses up his crooked nose.

"Afternoon, sir," she said humbly as she approached.

Kruk glanced up at her with muddy, nearsighted eyes, squinting and pushing his glasses up again before buring his nose back in his ledger. "Afternoon, yes. Oh, very good. Thank you."

Tohbie wasn't sure how much of that was meant for her or the papers he processed unfalteringly as they spoke. "Me name's Tohbie. I'm lookin' for me little boy, Khole. He's t'ree years old. I's... hopin' a neighbor may've took him here..."

"Khole, you say? Three years old? (Yes. Thank you. I'll have someone take care of that right away.) Three male infants have been brought here who's liniage we have failed to identify," he wheezed. "One has red hair, (Here, take this to the quartermaster in the Vally of Honor. Very good.) one has a birthmark on the sole of his left foot, and the third is wearing a necklace made from orange seashells and had his nose pierced some time in the last three weeks. (Tell her we have enough blankets now thanks to her contribution. Maybe she'll finally stop sending the dratted things.) I'm sorry to say, though, that not every refugee checked in here," he said, likely having picked up that none of the discriptions matched Tohbie's son. "The initial day was very chaotic. Very chaotic indeed. If your little boy did slip past me, I would hazzard that any rational person with a child of unknown origin would deposit them in the orphanage inside Orgrimar."

Tohbie bit her lip and was quiet for a moment. "One more question if I may? Have you seen anyone wit' t'rowin' knives like dis one?" She gingerly pulled the stamped knife from her pocket and held it out on her open hand.

Kruk squinted up at it and adjusted his glasses again. "Can't say as I have, but unless folk were holding them out for me like that, I wouldn't." He squinted up at her, looking truely appologetic. "I really am quite sorry I haven't had better news for you, young lady."

Tohbie smiled sadly and shook her head. "Don' worry none, dad. T'ank you, in any case. Good luck wit' dis madhouse."

As she wandered away in silence, her eyes down and most of her weight on her staff, she heard him mutter to himself, "'Madhouse?' This is one of the easiest jobs I've ever undertaken. Why I remember..."