Tauren Tale, Chapter 10
#10 of Tauren Tale
"What do you mean by that?" Jorga gasped.
Sanja turned to look. He seemed more stunned than angry.
"Of course we're in a hurry! I want to see Mom and Dad again."
Sanja flopped down on her butt and covered her face with her hands. "We will. We will see them again, but Kazbo needs time to recover from his injuries. And hurrying isn't going to get us back any sooner."
"Of course it will!" Jorga yelled, ignoring the Gnome for a moment. "Every day we sit here is one more day before we get home."
"Ugh," Sanja groaned. "I was really hoping I wouldn't have to tell you this yet, but to get home, we have to go through the Stonetalon pass. Even if we left Kazbo behind - which we won't - and started hiking now, then we would be too late to get to the pass, it would already be filled with snow."
She looked up into her brother's eyes. They were full of disbelief.
"There's no way to get through the snow. I'm sorry, Kiddo, but even if we dug our way through it, we'd just starve to death or freeze.
"We're going to have to camp in the foothills for the winter." She winced and prepared to say what she had been holding from him. "And then we can cross back into Mulgore when the snow melts next summer..."
Jorga's jaw hung open. He gasped. "You lied to me!"
"No! I never lied to you," Sanja said, trying to keep calm. "I said that we had a very long journey ahead of us."
"But you could have told me!"
Sanja nodded and stared at her knees. "I could have. I was afraid you'd give up, or refuse to go on if you knew just how long it was going to take."
"You're doing this on purpose! You don't want to go back to Mulgore." She looked up to see flames behind the little boy's eyes. His black mane seemed to stand on end. The white splotch on his forehead shined like a beacon into her soul. "You don't want to go back because you don't have any friends back home!"
"That's not true!" she shouted.
"You're keeping me from getting home because you're hoping Kazbo will take you back to Gnomeregan, so you can read books and be a librarian!" He looked almost panicked. He smelled panicked. The insides of his ears were bright red. "I don't want to go to Gnomeregan! I want to go home! I want to see Mom and Dad!"
"We will go home. I promise!" she said. "We're going as fast as we can. But no matter how much we hurry, we can't get home this year." Her eyes were full of tears.
"I hate you! You're the worst sister anyone has ever had!" He screamed. "I hate both of you!"
Sanja watched him run from the campsite, his tail hanging low, but she felt too weak to chase him. She looked over at the Gnome when she had finally composed herself.
"You should go after him. Don't worry about me."
Sanja shook her head and wiped away a few tears. "He's got every right to be mad. He just needs some time to cool off." She tried to manage a smile with only mixed success. "Tauren blood runs hot. He's angry, but he won't go far.
"Besides," she added, "getting your herbs is more important. We need to get that poultice on you before infection sets in."
Sanja returned with a variety of roots, leaves, and berries by mid-afternoon. Kazbo looked worse than when she had left, but at least he was still conscious. His lips were black and blue from sucking on bruiseweed.
"He hasn't come back."
Sanja nodded.
Sanja listened to the crackling fire without a word. She didn't have the strength to hunt, so she was just roasting some of the tubers from her pack.
In her searches for herbs, she had also returned with a large load of plant fibre, stripped from inside some bark she had peeled from a dying tree. With one end looped around her hoof, she worked endlessly to twist the fibre into twine.
She had hoped that the work would take her mind off her brother, but it hadn't.
"Aren't you worried?"
"Of course I'm worried!" She shouted at the Gnome, interrupting him. "I'm worried sick. He could get bitten by a poisonous snake, or fall out of a tree, or who-knows-what."
Sanja looked apologetic. "Mom made me promise, before we left, that I'd look after him. She makes me promise the same thing every day, like I was going to forget or something."
The chirping of jungle birds filled the silence between them.
"I hope that when my granddaughter grows up," Kazbo said with a smile, "that she is a lot like you.
"If I make it back home..."
"You will," she reassured him.
"I think I would very much like to learn how to cook, or how to make pottery. And then when Sorassa is a little older, I think I will try to teach her."
Sanja didn't know what to say. She didn't feel like a role model. She dropped her ears in a Tauren blush.
"Sorassa is a very pretty name," she mumbled.
"My oldest, Hagin, named her after his grandmother, my mother."
He smiled and thought back on happier times... back when everyone was in good health and his entire, extended family lived nearby. He thought about the days before the war, before the fall of Gnomeregan.
Kazbo was, as were all Gnomes, thrilled by the eventual recapture of their capital, but Gnomeregan was not yet the same as it once had been. Troggs still roamed some irradiated sections unchecked, and few of the underground city's original inhabitants had returned. It could be decades before the once-great city regained its former glory, if it ever did.
"I'm really sorry about what Jorga said before he left." Sanja readjusted the twine from between her toes and grabbed another handful of fibre. She avoided looking in his face. "I don't know where he got the idea that I wanted to go to Gnomeregan. I never said that."
A silence stretched.
"I guess I am jealous of you. Jorga can sense that." She shrugged. "If so many books really do exist... well, I would like to see them some day."
"They do exist," Kazbo said. "There are thousands and thousands of books in our library alone. Some of the tomes are so large and thick that you can't even... well, I suppose you could lift them."
That earned him a small, private smile.
"I suppose I could never read them all, even if I live to be twenty." Sanja's eyes brightened a bit. "But I bet you have! One hundred and six years is forever. I bet you have read them all a dozen times."
The Gnome smiled and shook his head. "I have not read the half of them. Though some I have read more than once."
She stared at the little man in awe, her worries forgotten for the moment. "But how can that be? Do the years underground pass more swiftly than our years on the prairie?"
Kazbo chuckled briefly and then clutched his wounds in pain. "Gnomish books are very long," he said. "Your song about the Tauren leaving Mulgore could fit on a couple of sheets, but a single Gnomish book can contain hundreds of pages. And some of the books are very, very old, and written in languages that few living people recall."
The girl looked up at the trees overhead and tried to imagine such books.
"No Tauren tale is so long," she explained. "Sitting around the fire is everyone's chance to talk. If an elder were to try to sing a Gnomish tale, I suppose his voice would give out long before he reached the end."
The fire crackled.
"Do you think I should look for him?"
There was suddenly a noise in the distance. The day was starting to grow dimmer, but the two could clearly see Jorga sprint around a corner in the road and head towards the camp.
His eyes were wide with fear.
"You came back," Kazbo started to say.
"Someone is coming!" Jorga hissed as soon as he was close enough that he didn't have to shout.
Sanja jumped to her feet and grabbed her spear. "Is it Theodore?" she whispered.
The boy shrugged and she looked around the campsite. They could not hide. Kazbo could barely move; and even if the fire were doused, it would continue to smoke. It would be obvious to any passerby that they had been there only moments earlier.
"Was it Horde?" the Gnome hissed. The whites of his eyes shown wide.
"I don't know!" the boy mouthed. "But they're coming this way!"
"Don't worry about the Horde," she assured him. "Just stay behind us and we'll explain that you're a friend. They will not harm you."
She hoped that her faith in the Horde was not misplaced. She was confident that other Tauren would listen to her for long enough to hold off judgment of the Gnome. But what if the strangers were Orcs? Or Forsaken? Did the Forsaken listen to anyone? She doubted that.
"But what if they're Alliance?" Jorga hissed.
"I will protect you both," Kazbo groaned.
But Sanja shook her head. "Don't stand up. You'll only make your wounds worse."
A long minute passed. Sanja felt the need to say something to her brother, to scold him for running off, or to say that she was relieved that he was back, but nothing came out. She stayed fixed and focused on the path ahead.
"I smell them," Jorga whispered.
Sanja nodded. "I do too."
Kazbo looked frantically from one to the other. "Are they Trolls? Or undead?" he squeaked. "Are they Horde?"
Neither said a word. The Tauren stared down the road unblinking; waiting.
With a crunch of leaves, three shapes emerged from the trees.
Kazbo could hear the tension in Sanja's voice.
"Alliance."
Tall and slender, a man and woman stopped in their tracks. Their skin was dark and rosy, almost violet in hue. They were both dressed in ornate leather armor.
The third figure was a dark grey jungle cat. Off-white spots covered its sleek pelt.
"Horde!" the man yelled. In a single, fluid motion, he pulled the bright red bow from his back and nocked a steel-bladed arrow on the string.
The woman, curvaceous as she was beautiful, leapt forward onto all fours. She shifted forms as she fell, and a huge, reddish-brown bear roared where she landed.
The jungle cat was already running toward the trio, and closing the gap between them fast.
The archer drew the arrow to his ear and Sanja screamed. Her body fell on top of Jorga.