“Very kind.” Vol’jin smiled. “I be helping you.”
“What?”
“Many arrows, and the refugees, they be trusting everyone else. We be providing them cover.” Vol’jin nodded to both squads of monks. “Gather people, arrows, and bows. We gonna retreat south and east. We gonna draw them off.”
Tyrathan smiled. “Use their pride to deflect them?”
“Zandalari always need to be learning humility.”
“Right.” He addressed the monks. “Look, stash arrows and bows at standing stones, like those, all the way up into the mountains.” The man gave Vol’jin a half smile. “I’m ready to die when you are.”
“Then it gonna be a long time.” Vol’jin turned to Chen. “You command the blues.”
“You’ll have the left; he’ll have the right. I should have the center.”
“Ours gonna be thirsty work, Chen Stormstout.” The troll rested both hands on the pandaren’s shoulders. “Only you can brew what gonna slake it.”
“You will be terribly alone.”
“What he’s trying to say, Chen, is that we’re not going to be fighting out there so you can die with us.”
The pandaren looked at Tyrathan. “What about the two of you?”
The man laughed. “We’re fighting to spite each other. He’d be mortified if he died before I did, and I feel the same way. And we will be thirsty. Very thirsty.”
Vol’jin nodded toward the refugees. “And they, Chen, be needing leadership of a pandaren.”
The brewmaster paused for a moment, then sighed. “I find a place I wish to call home, and yet it’s the two of you who fight for it.”
The troll accepted a Zandalari war bow and quiver from a monk. “When one be without a home himself, then fighting for a friend’s home be the most noble act.”
“Ships have dropped anchor. They’re lowering boats.”
“Let us go.”
Vol’jin for a moment found it curious to be stalking down a cobbled road with pandaren monks fanned out before him on both sides and a man apace with him. All he had known in his life had not prepared him for this. Hunted and hurting, homeless and believed dead by many, yet he felt completely alive.
He glanced at Tyrathan. “We should be shooting the tallest first.”
“Any special reason?”
“Bigger targets.”
The man smiled. “And it’s four and a half inches.”
“You know I not gonna wait on you.”
“Just get the one that gets me.” Tyrathan tossed him a salute and cut east, following the blues as they moved into the village.
Vol’jin kept on straight as reds hustled shocked pandaren from shadows and doorways. They’d clearly seen trolls before and, given how they cringed from him, it had been commonly in nightmares. Even though they might understand he had come to help, they could not help but fear.
Vol’jin liked that. He realized it wasn’t because, as with the Zandalari, he wanted to rule by fear, or felt that his inferiors should fear him. It was because he had earned their fear. He was a shadow hunter. He was the slayer of men and trolls and Zandalari. He had liberated his home. He led his tribe. He had advised the warchief of the Horde.
Garrosh so feared me that he had me murdered.
For a heartbeat, he considered marching straight to the quay that several longboats of Zandalari were approaching, and revealing himself. He’d fought against them before but doubted his presence would surprise them. Worse, it might alert them to the fact that their understanding of their enemy was incomplete.
Part of him realized that, in the past, he might have done just that. The same way he confronted Garrosh and threatened him while taking the Darkspears out of Orgrimmar, he would have roared his name and dared them to come after him. He would let them know that he wasn’t afraid and that his lack of fear should inspire fear deep in their hearts.
He nocked an arrow. This be what they need deep in their hearts. He drew and let fly. The arrow, with a barbed, flesh-rending head, arced out. His target, the troll hunched at the bow, waited to jump out as soon as keel scraped sand. He never had a chance of seeing the shaft. It flew straight out at him, a lethal flyspeck. It caught him in the shoulder, nicking the backside of his collarbone. It slid into him, running parallel to his spine, burying itself to the feathers in his body.
He collapsed, crashing into the gunwale. He bounced up, then slid over the side, his feet the last thing going under. The boat, unbalanced, listed to starboard, then righted itself again.
Just in time for Vol’jin’s second arrow to pin the tiller troll to the rudder.
Vol’jin ducked back and turned away. As much as he might like to watch confused soldiers in an unsteady boat, that luxury would have cost him his life. Four arrows thudded into the wall against which he’d stood and two more overshot him.
Vol’jin pulled back to the ruins of the next building. He arrived as a monk helped a pandaren with a crushed shoulder crawl from beneath rubble. Farther out in the bay, where the last boat was coming in, an arrow slammed into the pilot’s ear. It twisted him around and flung him from the boat.
The lead boat grounded. A few Zandalari sprinted for cover. Others tipped the boat up and huddled behind it. The middle two boats backed water quickly in an attempt to stop. The last had a hardy soul take the pilot’s place at the rudder. An arrow transfixed him through the guts. He sat hard but kept his hand on the tiller, guiding the boat shoreward as the other trolls pulled on the oars.
The troll commanding the invasion from a ship farther at sea signaled furiously. The ships in the harbor renewed their assault with siege engines. Stones arced out, slamming into the beach in a great spray of sand. Vol’jin thought the half-buried stone a waste of effort, but one of the Zandalari sprinted toward it and threw himself down behind it.
And then another stone hit, and another.
So the game began. As Zandalari advanced, Vol’jin moved to the flank and shot. Spotters aboard ship would then turn the siege engines on his hiding place, smashing it to flinders. Off to the east they did the same with Tyrathan’s hidey-holes, though how they saw him Vol’jin had no idea. He couldn’t.
Each wave of stones drove Vol’jin back and let more trolls advance. The ships lowered more boats. Some of the Zandalari even stripped off their armor and dove into the bay with bows and arrows tightly wrapped in oilskins. The ships lay waste to a wide arc in the center of Zouchin, and troops moved ashore to occupy it.
The shadow hunter made every arrow count. He didn’t always kill. Armor blunted some shots. Occasionally a target provided him only the glimpse of a foot, or a patch of blue skin through a tangle of fallen timbers. The simple fact was, however, that for every arrow he possessed, the ships had a dozen ballista stones and half that many soldiers.
So Vol’jin pulled back. He found only one monk’s body as he went. She’d been struck through by two arrows. From the tracks leading south, she’d shielded two cubs from the shots that had killed her.
He paced after those cubs, trailing them back through the village. Just when their trail broke into the open behind a home collapsed on splintered pilings, Vol’jin heard scrabbling. He turned, quickly, as a Zandalari warrior slid into view. Vol’jin reached back for an arrow, but his enemy shot first.
The arrow caught him in the flank and punched out his back. Pain pulsed from his ribs, staggering him. Vol’jin dropped to a knee and reached for his glaive as the other troll nocked another arrow.
The Zandalari smiled broadly in triumph, flashing teeth proudly.
A heartbeat later, an arrow arced down between those teeth. For a half second, it appeared as if the troll was vomiting feathers. Then eyes rolled up in his skull and he pitched backward.
Vol’jin turned slowly, looking back along the arrow’s line of flight. Long grasses closed at the crest of a hill. Shot through the mouth. Four and a half inches. And he was wanting me to get the one who got him.
Dust still slowly settled over the
twitching troll. Vol’jin reached back and snapped off the arrow’s head, then slid the shaft from his chest. He smiled as the wound closed; then he pilfered the troll’s quiver and continued the fighting withdrawal.
15
It should be rainin’. The bright sun mocked Khal’ak while failing to warm her. She stood tall on the bow of her barge, not because of the commanding image it made but because it was the best vantage point from which to survey the shore.
The barge nudged a floating longboat aside. It bobbed there in the slight swell. The pilot had died with his hand on the tiller, an arrow through his bowels. It had to have been painful, but his expression betrayed nothing. He stared forward, eyes now dulling as flies explored them.
Sand hissed beneath the barge’s hull as it came gently to shore. She leaped down, her dark cloak flapping. Two warriors awaited her—Captain Nir’zan, and a larger hulking troll carrying a massive shield. They immediately snapped to attention and saluted crisply.
She returned the salute, fueling it with her displeasure. “You determined what happened?”
“With as much certainty as be possible, my lady.” Nir’zan faced inland. “Owing to previous infiltration an’ study, we inserted scouts through a cove to the west. A pair swam ashore, killed two pandaren fishing dere, and secured the heights. They remained on station as per their orders and been interrogated. At that point the scouts proceeded inland, and all was as planned.”
She swept a hand out, taking in the broken landscape. “The plan deteriorated.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Why?”
The Zandalari warrior’s eyes tightened. “The why be less important than the how, my lady. Come.”
She followed him into the village, to the wreckage of a house nearly fifty yards from the beach. At their approach, another warrior dropped to a knee and peeled back a reedy sleeping mat. It had preserved a single footprint.
Ice water trickled through her insides. “Not one of ours?”
“No. Definitely a troll, but too small for Zandalari.”
Khal’ak turned and looked back down to the shore. “Dis archer killed the pilot?”
“And another warrior on that boat.”
“A very good shot.”
Nir’zan pointed to the east. “Over there, where you be seein’ your lieutenant, there be another track. Human, using our arrows. He killed another pilot.”
She measured from where the far soldier stood to the bay. “And one of our bows, yes? A lucky shot?”
Nir’zan lifted his chin, exposing his throat. “I be liking to believe that, but can’t. Neither luck nor bow leaves a track.”
“Honesty. Good.” She slowly nodded. “What else?”
The warrior headed off out of the village and south along the road. “We be finding a few more bodies in town. The archers shot and moved quickly. They were buyin’ time for others to evacuate. Many tracks leading south. You’ll want to see this.”
Nir’zan brought her to where one of the pandaren lay, transfixed with two arrows. Even in death, even wearing armor emblazoned with a snarling tiger’s face, the creature looked ridiculously benign. Khal’ak dropped to a knee beside the body and prodded the thigh with her fingers. Despite the body’s stiffening from death, she could tell the pandaren was well muscled and quite compact.
She looked up. “I see no weapon. No belt.”
“The paws, my lady.”
She grasped a paw and ran her thumb over the pandaren’s knuckles. The fur had been worn away. The dark skin had callused over. The palm felt similarly rough. “These be not fisherfolk.”
“We found four more. Some had weapons.” The warrior hesitated. “All had killed.”
“Show me.”
They continued south and then veered east to the grassy bowl beside the road. Khal’ak had chosen that spot for the ambush. She’d meant the scouts to kill a few refugees and drive the rest back into the village. Once her troops had secured it, the pandaren would serve as bearers and haulers.
She surveyed the carnage. Her troops, albeit clad in light armor, with light weapons, meant to move fast, lay scattered and broken. Three dozen of them dead, and only a handful of pandaren to account for that destruction? That she could see two bodies here indicated that they’d made no attempt to remove their dead. And even if two or three had been wounded for every abandoned corpse . . .
“Have you any accounting for the number of pandaren?”
“South and a bit more east be where they staged. We found da man’s and troll’s footprints too, as well as tracks of other beasts.”
“The whole of the force, Nir’zan!”
“Twenty-one, near as we be making it.”
Khal’ak stood and strode to the center of the bowl where an exceptionally large body lay. It was Lieutenant Trag’kal. At least she thought it was. His face had been destroyed, but there was no mistaking his height. She’d handpicked him to lead the scouts.
And he failed me.
She kicked his corpse, then turned to Captain Nir’zan. “I want it all cataloged. I want to know their positions, their wounds, everything. I want all you know, not guesses or estimates. And I be wanting to know who dese pandaren are. We been told they have no army. They have no militia. They have no defenses. Our sources appear to be woefully misinformed.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And I want to be knowing where the villagers have gone.”
The Zandalari warrior nodded. “We be deployin’ a screening force forward. We tracked the archers, the man and the troll, heading east, away from da road, but all indications be that the refugees have withdrawn south. We found signs that dese beasts have returned to carry the old and wounded.”
“Yes, I need to know more about dem as well.” She stooped and pulled a bloody arrow from a dead troll’s neck. The slender shaft ended in a simple point. “This be not even suited to varminting. We brought an army, and they faced us with toys?”
“Dey took our supplies as quickly as they could, my lady.”
“And organized a retreat in good order.” Khal’ak pointed the arrow at the scouts’ bodies. “After you have cataloged everything, I be wantin’ them stripped an’ skinned. Fill their skins with straw and post dem on either side of the road. Throw their bodies in the sea.”
“Yes, my lady, but you realize there are no pandaren that sight gonna frighten.”
“I be not wanting to frighten pandaren. It be meant for the rest of us.” Khal’ak flung the arrow down. It bounced off armor and settled in the grasses. “Any Zandalari who believes empire be his birthright needs to remember that births be seldom easy and often are inclined to be bloody. Dis will not happen again, Nir’zan. See to it.”
• • •
Vol’jin woke with a start. It wasn’t because of his dream of being chased by Zandalari. He’d enjoyed that. To be hunted meant he was someone. They hunted him out of anger and fear, and to be able to inspire that gave him pleasure. Being able to inspire dread in his enemies had ever been a part of him, and it was a part he wanted to salvage.
His body ached, especially his thighs. He could still feel the stitch in his side, and his throat remained raw. His wounds had all closed, but permanent healing would take longer. He resented the lingering pains, not because of what they were but because they reminded him of how close his enemies had come to killing him.
He and the man had pulled back as planned. They found stores of arrows and bows where they’d told the monks to leave them. They also found food, which they consumed hurriedly, and lines of stones pointing them to the next cache. They scattered those before they moved on; without those indicators, they’d have been lost and doubtlessly killed.
The Zandalari had come after them, but both man and troll had known their business. They killed the archers first, which gave them the advantage in ranged combat. The Zandalari archers had not been bad—a bloodied rag tied around Vol’jin’s left thigh attested to that. Vol’jin and Tyrathan had just been better. Th
e troll grudgingly admitted Tyrathan was much better. He’d killed one pesky Zandalari archer by arcing one arrow into a narrow crack between rocks, and had the second in the air—aimed at where the troll would draw himself back—even before the first had struck. Vol’jin told himself he’d seen equivalent displays of skill before, but never at a time when targets shot back.
The troll awoke with a start because of his surroundings. The Temple of the White Tiger, while by no means posh or opulent by any standard, was warm and filled with light. Vol’jin had been given a cell not much larger than the one he had at the Shado-pan Monastery, but the lighter color, and flashes of greenery through the windows, made it seem huge.
He arose, washed, and, when he returned to his cell, found a white robe laid out for him. He pulled it on, then followed the elusive piping of a flute to a courtyard away from the temple’s main precincts. Chen and Tyrathan stood there, along with the rest of the red and blue monks. Taran Zhu had appeared—undoubtedly flown in on a cloud serpent—and all of them wore white. Some of the monks, like Vol’jin, had been wounded in the fighting. They leaned on crutches or had arms in slings.
Five small white statues, no more than a handbreadth in height, carved of a soft stone, stood on a table to the side. Beside them were a small gong, a blue bottle, and five tiny blue cups. Taran Zhu bowed to the statues, then to the assembled crowd. They returned the bows. Then the master monk looked toward Chen, Tyrathan, and Vol’jin.
“When a pandaren becomes fully Shado-pan, the monk travels with one of our master artisans to the heart of Kun-Lai. They travel deep beneath the earth. They find the bones of the mountain and they mark out a little piece of it. The artisan then carves it into their likeness, leaving it connected to the bone. And when the wheel turns, and when that monk passes, the statue breaks free. The statues are gathered, and we store them in the monastery, so all may remember who have come before.”