Roach Out
The holdfast outside Dunwald Village was dead. Not the ‘everyone was asleep’ kind of dead, literally dead. The Twilight’s Hammer had killed all the dwarves. Roach wished he could say this atrocity was an uncommon sight, but let’s face it, it’s Azeroth. Slaughter was always around the zombie-filled, or fel-burned, or tentacle-groped corner. He tossed the corpse of a cultist on top of the others in the wagon, some human with ragged skin and gray in his beard.
Just another fool who fell for the void’s bullcrap. Or the old god’s …whatever.
Any more bodies and his wagon was likely to fall apart. Surely this will be enough to satisfy her. He grabbed his lute, ran up the stairs to the top of the holdfast’s wall and sat, allowing his legs to hang over the ledge. The sun shone pale gold, layered with streaks of plumed clouds drifting eastward. He slipped off his gauntlets, allowing the light to fall upon his pale hands. The subtle warmth was enough to tempt old memories of the summers when he would push his children on the swings outside their home in Eversong.
Damn you sun.
To the west he spied a blanket of bruised clouds rolling in their direction, the scent of rain already in the wind. And a storm too, screw me twice. The vision came unbidden, he didn’t want it, always battled to keep them away, but fighting the Lich King’s curse was like trying to block the wind with bare hands. Another summer storm had raged across Eversong Woods. As the wind thrashed against the walls of their home in Fairbreeze village, his daughter Alura looked at him, pouting. She had the same eyes as her mother, deep blue, flecked with gold, reminding him of the morning sun casting golden embers upon the ocean. “I hate storms, father. I wanna go play outside.”
Roach had put on his best reassuring grin as he so often did when consoling her.
He knelt down and brushed a lock of golden hair out of her face. “Storms don’t last forever, my little dragonhawk.” He gave her a kiss on the forehead. Alura smiled that crooked smile of hers and ran off to her room.
The winds howled, wrapping upon the house and within the torrent a deep guttural voice called his name. “Roach…”
He snapped around. His wife Lyrielle and his eldest daughter Myriss sat on the couch by the fireplace, sewing. “Did either of you just hear the wind call my name?” But neither looked up at him nor gave answer. Something doesn’t seem right here.
“Roach!” Lightning flashed through the windows and the tempest thundered again. The tone of the words clear enough now that he knew.
This isn’t real.
Hearing the old orc’s voice stirred him from the past. His home faded away, back to the holdfast’s courtyard. He expelled a sigh of cold air from his dead lungs, his hand reaching out to grab hold of his wife and children, but his family had been dead for a long time. He looked down over the ledge.
Vargrim stared up at him, his mouth frowning around his tusks. Dried blood stained his white beard from all the corpses he had been carrying. “You were trapped in your memories again.”
“Was I?” Roach looked at his hands, flexing his fingers open and closed, feeling nothing but the faint numbness of undeath. “Funny thing, those memories, always sneaking up on me like a snake in the brush.” He forced a laugh, but deep down he suspected the orc knew it wasn’t only memories. The Lich King had called it the endless hunger, right before sending him, Vargrim, and the rest of the death knights to butcher the civilians of New Avalon. One particular killing from that day haunted him more than any other. He and Vargrim dragged a mother and her children out of their home. She pleaded for her daughter’s lives with tears rolling down her flushed cheeks. “Don’t worry, my lady,” Roach had consoled her. He pulled out his lute and plucked the strings to a lullaby his father used to play for him. “Hold your children tight. I’ll sing you the sweetest song and it will all be over soon.” Vargrim drew his axe and went to work. Roach had screamed inside of his mind, trying to force his fingers to stop playing the music, pleading for the orc to stop chopping, but like Vargrim, he was trapped within his body, no longer in control.
Roach tapped his fist against his helmet, knocking the horrible images away. To the hells with you, Arthas.
Vargrim still had his eyes upon him. “You can talk to me about your family, if you want,” he said. His black armor rattled as he picked up another dwarf and laid the body over his shoulder.
Roach took up his lute, the smooth polished wood in his hands brought a measure of comfort. “Talking about them won’t bring them back just like it didn’t help bring your own family back.”
“I’ve already dealt with my crap, you’re the one still holding on.”
We’re not all as strong as you. Vargrim wasn’t wrong in that. The lich king had forced the orc to murder his own wife and sons and hand him their heads. After being freed at Light’s Hope, Roach returned to Northrend with Vagrim to help search for his family’s remains, but the bodies were never found. The orc spent days in his cell inside the Ebon Hold after that. Until one day he came out and said he was over it and never mentioned them again. Roach had questioned the sincerity of his words, but he also knew orcs were built different.
He plucked an upbeat note on his lute. “If I’m to be tormented, let it be the faces of those I loved in my nightmares instead of some nameless monster.”
Vargrim shook his head then went back to loading his wagon.
The day grew long and Roach wanted to be on their way before the rain beset them. He scanned over the courtyard once more to see if they missed any. This time his eyes fell upon a dwarven woman lying still against a fence post, staring up at the sun, holding something wrapped in her arms. Well, at least you and your baby are in a better place now. Unless the afterlife is just as crap as this one.
Roach strummed a soft melody. “Ser Vargrim, shall I sing a song to lift our spirits?”
“Ha, ha, screw you,” the orc grumbled. “Call me ‘Ser’ again and see where I stick that lute.”
Roach knew addressing him by his honorary title would induce some anger, but the old orc seemed to work faster when mad. “Such vulgar language. I hope you never spoke that way in front of your mother.”
Vargrim dropped the dwarf he was holding. “My mother was a warlock, trained under Gul’dan himself. She woulda pulled your soul out your butt then cursed both halves of ya.”
“Ah.” Roach wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that. He and Vargrim had been friends since the Ebon Blade formed. In all that time the orc never mentioned his mother once. He decided to take the delicate approach. “She…sounds like she was an inspiring woman.”
“She was,” Vargrim said, nodding. “I loved that old hag. It’s too bad Khadgar blew up her head.” The orc went back to tossing bodies like they were sacks of oats.
“You paint a sorrowful picture as always my friend.” His thoughts turned to his own mother, who’d died defending Silver Moon from the scourge. A brilliant mage in her own right, one that Roach aspired to be since he was a child and tried to pick up her staff. His father, a ranger-captain, had unfortunately passed during the Second War, slain by an Amani troll’s spear. “It matters not to me, whether you become a Magister or a fisherman,” his mother had said when he turned ten years old. “As long as you love who you are, Gaerith.” He was glad of those words, because in the end he failed miserably as a mage and took up the fishing pole instead. All before the scourge drowned his wife and children in front of him of course. He’d fallen into a drunken stupor for years after that until Lor’themar announced the campaign to Northrend. He thought he would finally get payback on Arthas. It was all he could think about in those later years, when neither the bottom of a bottle or a strange woman’s warmth could cover the shame and sadness eating away at his soul. Instead of getting his revenge, a ghoul stabbed him in the back and then he awoke to find the Lich King stuffing his soul back into his own dead body.
Roach played a few sad notes on his lute, the beginnings of a song taking shape.
“Desperate, we hold onto love that barely lingers,
But fate sweeps all hope away with a giant middle finger…”
Vargrim tossed another dwarf on top of his deathcharger’s wagon then clapped his hands. “Beautiful, now sing me a song about how you’re gonna get off your rear and help.”
“I’ve done my share. I’m managing now,” he said, flashing a wry smile beneath his helmet.
The orc held out his hands and looked every which way, “What? It’s just you and me here. What the hell do you think you managing?”
Roach pulled an answer out of his butt. A skill he’d developed during his time as a drunk bard. He lost count of how many lies he had told the ladies when they caught him sneaking out of their window in the middle of the night. “I’m making sure Deathwing doesn’t take us by surprise.”
Vargrim growled low. He jammed a finger in the air toward him. “You think I need ya to tell me when a big freakin’ dragon is gonna swoop down and light our butt cheeks on fire?”
“Of course not. But with operations like this you need to think like a goblin.” Roach pointed to himself, “You have the brains and,” he then pointed to the orc.
Vargrim sneered. “Yeh, yeh, I’m the muscle. I get it ya little–.” As he hauled up a dead human cultist he muttered something under his breath about being older and wiser. The orc was right about the old part at least. He was one of the last remaining Blackrocks. If the tales were true, he had fought Blackhand for the mantle of chief and lost. His clan thought him dead, but he’d somehow survived. The warchief was so impressed he let him live. Vargrim didn’t like to discuss that fight, but he was still happy to remind Roach of his heritage whenever the situation warranted it. He even forged a great hammer for his rune weapon. And made sure it was bigger than the one Blackhand wielded, as a final middle finger to the fallen warchief of old.
After another hour passed Roach smiled and nodded at the two wagons full of corpses. Most were dwarves, but they had a few humans, orcs, and trolls from the Twilight’s Hammer sprinkled in as well. Two massive ettin’s lay dead near the wall, but they were too big to take with them. One of the ettin’s pairs of necks twisted around one another, their heads bashed in with a hammer. The other had taken a spear through the face on one head and the other had been decapitated. “A fine haul, Ser Vargrim. This will surely get us back into Lady Alistra’s good graces.”
“We’re only in this mess because you slew her pet abominations.”
“An unfortunate accident, I’m afraid.”
A rumbling laugh escaped Vargrim’s lips, “Is that what you call it? Koltira said he found you running naked through the Ebon Hold with just your helmet on, swinging your axe at every minion, crying ‘death to the scourge’.”
Roach cringed. He could have gone the rest of his un-life without being reminded of that little incident. There was always a price to pay for ignoring the call to violence. “Let’s stop worrying about the past and look to the future. Deathwing has delivered us a reshaped world. After we drop off these corpses I say we go on a vacation. Where do you want to go?”
Before the orc could give answer a horn thundered in the distance and it wasn’t the Horde’s. Roach stood and turned. Riders on horseback barrelled towards them, kicking up dust and grass. Twelve in all, shining in plate armor, carrying the blue and gold lion banner of Stormwind. He liked the other banner even less, a gray eight-pointed star on a white field with a golden hand at the center.
Vargrim’s booming voice startled him. He didn’t even notice the orc coming up the stairs. “What are those fools doing here? Shouldn’t they be in Northrend?”
“It seems the paladins fancied a change of scenery,” Roach replied, smiling beneath his skull-faced helmet. “What better place to visit than the Twilight Highlands?”
Vargrim slammed his fist against the stone, breaking off chunks, sending them tumbling over the ledge. “There’s no way we’re getting out of here with the bodies now.”
We’ll see about that.
The riders came to a full stop, several yards ahead. The knights of the Argent Crusade looked all proper and pompous in their unblemished enameled armor of gold and silver. Some carried mace and shield, others with great hammers and swords resting across their backs. Their banners snapped in the gusts from the storm almost upon them.
The paladin in the center, decked out in the black, red and gold armor of judgement, leaned forward, sweeping his gaze between the two of them. He spoke with the expected confidence of a pious prick. “What is the meaning of this?”
The knight beside him, adorned in bright steel and a matching tabard of the silver hand, spoke next, her words full of disdain. “This is the village I was told the Twilight’s Hammer had assaulted.”
“I only see the Ebon Blade here, Lady Elysia. And a lot of dead dwarves…curious.”
Roach pointed his thumb behind them. “We took care of the cultists already, your services are not needed here.”
“Is that so?” Captain prick removed his helmet, revealing a tan face of hardened features, gray eyes and neatly trimmed black beard shot with gray. “I am Knight-Captain Robbert of the Argent Crusade. I command you to cast aside your rune blades, open these gates and come out with your hands in the air. We’ll investigate and see if you are telling it true.”
“We can’t do that. You see, we have plans for these corpses and need to be on our way.”
The paladin grimaced. “Disgusting. By rights you should have all been destroyed when your king fell. Tell me, death knights, how many innocents did you kill in your profane service to Arthas?”
Vargrim took a step forward, a growl building up, but Roach laid the back of his hand on the orc’s chest, stopping him from tearing the paladin a new one.
“You’ll have to pardon us, Ser Prick,” Roach called back. “I’m afraid we didn’t take count, being dominated and all.”
The Knight-Captain sneered at hearing the nickname. “My name is Robbert. And you think that excuses you from your crimes? I lost both of my sons at Light’s Hope.”
“And I watched the scourge drag my wife and children from our boat and drown them in front of me. We all have our problems.” Roach snapped, not intending to reveal so much information, but he allowed his anger to take root. He saw Vargrim frowning at him from out of the corner of his eyes. I wasn’t ready to tell you the truth, buddy. But, now you know.
Robbert’s expression softened, “We’ve all suffered losses it seems, maybe we could–” His eyes narrowed. “You…that helmet. I remember it.”
Roach turned to Vargrim, confused, then looked back at the paladin. “What of it?”
“I prayed to the light every day to grant me vengeance upon the one who slew my sons.” Robbert’s words shook within every breath. “Warriors of the light, both of them, young and bright with their futures ahead. I never stopped loving them, from the moment they came into this world.” The knight-captain aimed his sword at Roach. “I thought revenge had been denied me, but lo and behold, I see the mask of the one who stole my boys from me. Destroying you, watching the light burn you to ash, I’ve thought of nothing else.”
At those words another knight reigned his horse up. “Knight-captain, is it wise to attack? Would this not start a conflict with the Ebon Blade?”
Robbert slipped his helmet back on and turned to him, “Ser Stevan, you swore an oath to the Argent Dawn to vanquish the scourge wherever they are found, did you not?”
“Yes, Ser. I did.”
“Then do your duty, Ser,” Robbert barked, raising his sword high in the air. “Knights of the Argent Crusade, attack!”
Roach threw up his hand. “Wait a moment–”
Lady Elysia yelled, summoning a hammer of light in her hand. She threw it toward Roach and Vargrim with the precision and speed that left no doubts of her skill. The orc ripped both of them out of the way, but stepped too far, taking them down to the ground, hard. Roach recovered himself, laughing. But the orc was far from doing the same. “What the hell’s so funny?”
“I wasn’t the one who killed his sons,” he shrugged. “I found this helmet on the ground after the battle was over.”
Vargrim rolled his eyes, “Oh for frigging sake, it’s too late now.”
He’d already formulated the plan hours ago. Roach grabbed Vargrim by the arm and pulled him near the western wall. “Don’t worry, I have a plan. Everything is going to be fine.”
“That’s what you always say.” The orc jammed a finger into the middle of his chest. “This is you, ‘Oh, oh, everything’s gonna be fine, trust me.’ But then it’s not fine and we always end up inside a giant crap-storm. How the hell are we supposed to get out of this one?”
Roach pointed at the massive corpses in front of them. “These are the plan.”
“What? These two right here?” Vargrim swept his eyes over both of the ettins, pointing.
“That’s right,” Roach said, nodding. “We’re going to raise these ettins, jump on their shoulders, grab up the wagons and ride them out of here. What’d ya say, buddy?”
Vargrim looked between them and the two giants. “Oh, I don’t know. This seems kinda dicey. What if we fall off?”
“Then we get smited to ash and all our problems will be over with.” Roach unsheathed his runeaxe and held it out in front of him. “Just trust me, this plan is full proof. When have I ever let you down?”
The orc squinted his eyes as he always did when thinking too hard. “What about that time in Ulduar when that dragon almost ate me?”
Crap, he’s got me there. “Okay, fine, I don’t let you down most of the time. We need to–”
Thundering crashes echoed across the courtyard, but it wasn’t from the encroaching storm. The gate shivered, cracking and splintering from the paladin’s blows.
“Yeah this plan is good enough for me.” Vargrim whipped out his rune hammer and invoked the raising spell. Shadowed tendrils arced out, seeping into the ettin’s corpse. After a second or two the giant’s dual heads twitched, his body convulsing until a cold light burned in his eyes. The ettin lurched up, moaning, then stood at attention.
Roach raised the other that was missing one of his two heads. One head is better than none I suppose. His minion climbed up, grunting, then picked up the giant stone club. He and Vargrim climbed onto their new mounts and directed them to pick up the corpse wagons.
The gate burst open, Lady Elysia, flanked by six other knights charged through then stopped dead in their tracks. “Light preserve us,” she cried, staring up at the two lumbering giants.
“Apologies, my sweet Lady, but we really must be going.” Roach pointed at her and his ettin swung its club, smacking her ten feet over into the wall. He and Vargrim rode forward, crashing through the remains of the gate and the wall above it. The paladins on foot dove out of the way, while Ser Robbert and the rest reigned their horses out of the path. One unfortunate soul was knocked off by one of the giant’s feet and fell to the ground, no longer moving. Light forged shields and hammers wizzed past them. One hammer slammed into Roach’s minion, but the ettin only staggered for a second before regaining speed
Vargrim’s ettin swung its club smacking three paladins and their horses through the air, in a din of blood-curdling screams and neighs.
“Knights, recover,” Robbert screamed. “Do not let them escape.”
A shield of light struck Roach’s back. The impact sent him tumbling down the front of the ettin, but he managed to grab hold of the giant organ beneath his loin cloth. He clung to the ice cold appendage for dear life, swinging from side to side. “Uh, my apologies, good sir, but I didn’t intend to know you this personally.” He looked over to Vargrim, shouting. “A little help with the paladins.”
When the orc saw his predicament, a devious grin spread across his face. Vargrim pointed and laughed, “You ain’ t livin’ this one down, hah, hang on!” Vargrim’s minion turned, slamming his club into the earth. The ground erupted in a straight line under the Knight-Captain and the two other paladins, sending them hurtling into the mud.
Roach made the ettin lower his hand down to his crotch so he could climb on. Cringing and wishing he had never come up with this idea, he took his position back on the shoulders. After a few minutes there were no signs the Argent Crusade had pursued them. The darkened sky faded as they moved further away from the storm. Sunlight beamed upon him and he still couldn’t believe this ridiculous idea worked.
Roach unslung the lute from his back and called over to his partner in crime. “How about a song to celebrate our victory of escape?”
Vargrim grinned. “Sure, but it better not be one I heard before. And I don’t like listening to soft crap.”
“Not a problem, my friend. I call this little number, She told me I blinked too fast.” Roach steadied his feet on the ettin’s shoulder then plucked the beginning upbeat notes on the strings. “To preface, I can neither confirm nor deny that this song is about me.”
Vargrim bellowed a deep rumbling laugh and clapped his giant hands to the rhythm.
“Here it goes!”
“I once knew a harlot, let’s call her Sylana,
And this story begins when I tripped into a brothel–”