Warcraft: Official Movie Novelization

As he marched, Durotan carried with him two weapons that he had inherited upon his father’s death. One was Thunderstrike, a spear carved with runes and adorned with leather wrapping. Notches had been carved into its wooden surface, each representing a kill. A horizontal slash stood for a beast’s life; a vertical one, that of an orc. While horizontal notches all but covered the shaft, there were several vertical ones as well.

The other weapon once used by his father, and his father Durkosh before him, was the axe Sever. Durotan made sure it was always as sharp as when it had been forged, and it more than lived up to its name.

Durotan went on foot, allowing others who were weaker or ill to ride the great white frost wolves that served the clan as both mounts and lifetime companions. Beside him strode his second-in-command, Orgrim Doomhammer, the massive weapon for which his line was named slung over his broad, brown back. Orgrim was one of a small handful who knew Durotan bone-deep, and whom he trusted not only with his own life, but with those of his mate and future child.

Draka, warrior, mate, and mother-to-be, rode her wolf Ice beside Durotan. For most of the journey, as was fitting, she had marched beside her mate. But eventually Durotan asked her to ride. “If not for your sake or the child’s, for mine,” he had said. “It is exhausting, wondering if you will drop in the dust.”

She had grinned at him, her lips curving over her small tusks, her dark eyes sparkling with the humor that he loved so well. “Huh,” she said. “I will ride, if only because I fear you will topple over trying to pick me up.”

In the beginning, spirits had been high. The clan had faced and defeated a terrible foe, the Red Walkers, but they had also learned that they could no longer expect aid from the weakened Spirits.

Durotan had assured his clan that they would always stay Frostwolves, even if they joined together with other orcs in the Horde. The thought of meat, fruit, water, clean air—things the clan badly needed—was heartening. The trouble, Durotan realized, was that the clan—and, truth be told, he himself—had departed thinking that their troubles would be over soon. The journey’s hardships had beaten that out of them.

He looked over his shoulder at his clan. They shuffled, they did not stride; and there was a bone-weariness about them that made his heart ache to see.

The light touch of his mate’s hand on his shoulder drew his attention back to her. He gave her a forced, weary smile.

“You look like you should be riding, not me,” she said, gently.

“There will be time enough for all of us to ride,” he said, “when we have enough meat that our wolves stretch out with bulging bellies beside us.”

Her gaze flickered from her own stomach back to his and her eyes narrowed teasingly. He laughed, surprised by the mirth, almost convinced he had forgotten how to. Draka always knew how to calm him, whether with laughter, love, or the occasional punch to help him get his head back on his shoulders. And their child—

The real reason, he knew, why he had left Frostfire Ridge. Draka was the only Frostwolf who was pregnant. And in the end, Durotan could not find a way to justify bringing his child—any orc child—into a world that could not nourish it.

Durotan reached to touch the belly he had teased her about, laying his enormous brown hand on it and the small life within. The words he had told his clan, on the eve of their departure, flitted through his mind: Whatever the lore says about what was done in the past, whatever the rituals stipulate we do, whatever rules or laws or traditions there are—there is one law, one tradition, which must not be violated. And that is that a chieftain must do whatever is truly best for the clan.

He felt a strong, rapid pressure against his palm and grinned in delight as his child seemed to agree that his decision had been the right one. “This one would march beside you already,” Draka said.

Before Durotan could respond, someone shouted for him. “Chieftain! They they are!!”

With a final caress, Durotan turned his attention to Kurvorsh, one of the scouts he had sent on ahead. Most Frostwolves kept their hair; it was only prudent in the frigid north. But Kurvorsh, like many others, had opted to shave his skull once they had traveled south, leaving only a single long lock he tied off. His wolf halted in front of Durotan, her tongue lolling from the heat.

Durotan tossed Kurvorsh a water skin. “Drink first, then report.” Kurvorsh swallowed a few thirsty gulps, then handed the skin back to his chieftain.