The Sunwalker at Fairbreeze

The tauren say An’she was wounded by the shadows long ago, and that the sun still bleeds a little every morning to warn the world that dawn is coming. The Sunwalkers greet that wound with drums. They gather in the dark before first light, beat out the yeena’e, and call on the ancestors who died saving lives to help the sun climb.

Somebody has to feed them afterward.

For years that somebody was a broad young tauren who kept the smoke pit behind the Sunwalker camp, rising long before the drummers to bank the coals so that when An’she cleared the horizon there would be meat ready for the faithful. The Sunwalkers, who are a pious order and not a subtle one, started calling the pit-keeper Dawnbrisket. The name stuck the way smoke sticks to fur. You can wash it all you like.

The pit-keeper listened while the meat turned. Listened to Chieftain Aponi Brightmane say that the dawn will come, that the balance will shift back to where it should be. Listened to the old ones argue whether the sun’s light and the Light of the priests were the same thing. And somewhere in all that listening, An’she answered. The first time the Light came, it came as warmth in his hands, which for a cook is a very confusing way to be chosen.

Then the Void came for the Sunwell. The elves’ great fount in Quel’Thalas was torn open into a swirling wound in the sky, and Aponi took her Sunwalkers north to pour An’she’s light into it while the siege raged. Dawnbrisket was left behind to mind the camp. Someone has to. The chronicler has met a great many heroes who were left behind to mind the camp. They tend to arrive later with something to prove.

By the time Dawnbrisket reached the war, the siege was a story people told in inns. Ula’tek had fallen. Quel’Thalas and Zul’Aman were trying out a peace neither of them trusted, and beneath the Coiled Isle something older than both was waking. A cook-turned-paladin, it turns out, is right on time for the second half of anything.

The road began, as roads do now, in Dornogal. Letters waited there with the seals of The Weaver, The Vizier and The General, people in Khaz Algar who expect to be noticed. A purse found its way into the Sunwalker’s hands as well, heavy enough to make a camp cook sit down for a moment. Dawnbrisket took the letters, took the purse, and went to Silvermoon City.

The elves cry “by the light of the sun” when they go to war. The chronicler watched a Sunwalker step into the Sanctum of Light and wondered whether anyone there had ever considered that the sun might have other friends.

Silvermoon put the newcomer to work at once. Magister Astalor Bloodsworn, who believes the city’s safety lies in methods his colleagues would rather not hear about, was waiting near the harbor with what he called a guest. The guest was a gnarldin in a cage, and it made its position on being called prey very clear. Astalor walked Dawnbrisket through his instruments: a crystal vessel, two traps, and the anguish the hunted leave behind, which the magister means to distill into wards for the city. The chronicler has heard worse ideas from elves, but not many.

Then Astalor opened the cage to make a point. The gnarldin made one back. Dawnbrisket survived the ambush, which is the only kind of graduation Astalor offers, and went back to the magister’s sanctum with a hunter’s license and a first name on the list: Magister Sunbreaker. A magister of Silvermoon with “Sunbreaker” for a name, now hunted by a servant of the sun. Somebody up there has a sense of humor.

In between, there were smaller rites. A handful of Hallow’s End sweets from the candy bucket at the inn, the elves applauding as though a war had been won. A wander through the Bazaar. And lessons in the pick and the sickle, because a Sunwalker who can pull ore from rock and herbs from the ground will never be a burden to the people he serves. Dawnbrisket paid the trainers what they asked and did not haggle. That is the cook in him. You always pay the person who feeds you.

Then the Path of Dawn, gold under the leaves, and Fairbreeze Village. Magistrix Landra Dawnstrider had three troubles waiting. Wild beasts were crowding into the village, driven from the woods. Strange Lightbloom was sprouting where it had no business growing. And a lynx the villagers call Sharpmaw had begun eyeing their children. Dawnbrisket took all three in hand.

And then the village turned out to have a fourth trouble, one the magistrix had not mentioned.

Two Alliance strangers were working Fairbreeze that evening, a hunter with arcane arrows and a rogue who struck out of the shadows with blades and black powder. The first time they caught the Sunwalker it was a surprise. The second time, it was an argument. By the third and fourth, it was a lesson. Four times Dawnbrisket fell among the pretty white houses of Fairbreeze, and four times An’she, who knows something about wounds that do not close, let the Sunwalker rise.

After the fourth, Dawnbrisket left the field. The chronicler does not count that as a defeat. The chronicler counts it as a cook who knows when the meat is ruined and the fire needs to be built again.

Sharpmaw still prowls. The Lightbloom keeps creeping toward the houses. Magister Sunbreaker’s name is still on Astalor’s list, and the Vilebranch are still stalking the woods. And somewhere in Eversong, a hunter and a rogue are telling each other about the big tauren in Fairbreeze.

They should enjoy it. The sun rises every morning.