The troll cocked his head. “And that’s the expression I be wearing now?”
“Well, no, maybe a little, around the eyes. The both of you. When you don’t think anyone is looking. Or when you don’t realize anyone is looking. It says this is your land, won by right, which you won’t surrender.” Chen shrugged once more. “Given our task, this is good.”
The man extended his cup to the pandaren and nodded when it was refilled. “Then what do you feel here?”
Chen set his waterskin down and scratched his chin. “I feel the peace that is this place’s promise. I think the two of you feel a bit of the mogu legacy. But, for me, the peace, the promise, it’s what I want in a home. It tells me I can stop wandering—but it doesn’t demand it. It’s a welcome that will never be withdrawn.”
He looked at the both of them, and for the first time Vol’jin could remember, Chen’s big golden eyes filled with sorrow. “I wish you could feel that too.”
Vol’jin gave his friend a smile. “It be enough for me that you do, Chen. I have a home, one you helped win. You secured a home for me. Impossible not to be pleased for you.”
Without much inducement, Vol’jin managed to get Chen and the monks to elaborate on their sense of the place. They complied happily, and Vol’jin took some joy in their impressions. However, after the sun set, a cold, dark wave rippled out from the east. The monks fell silent, and Tyrathan, who had been standing watch at the crest of the hill beneath which they camped, pointed.
“They’re here.”
Vol’jin and the others scrambled up with him. There, to the east, Mogu’shan Palace had lit up. Silver and blue lightning played over its faces, defining the structure with ivy-like twists that sparked at the corners. The display of magic impressed Vol’jin, not because of any sense of power but because of the aimless and casual way in which it was being displayed.
Chen shivered. “The welcome is being blanketed.”
“It being smothered.” Vol’jin shook his head. “Buried deeply. No one be welcome here anymore.”
Tyrathan looked at Vol’jin. “It’s more than a bowshot, but we could make it by dawn. Well before any revelers are awake.”
“No. They be baiting us with that display. That be where they want us to strike.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “They know we’re coming?”
“They have to assume we be, just as we have to assume they know we gonna react to the journal you captured.” Vol’jin pointed toward the southern mountain range. “Likely Horde and Alliance scouts be on the ridges. They gonna spot this and react. It gonna just take a while to discuss plans before they be moving.”
“Unless someone does it on his own initiative.” Tyrathan chuckled. “Months ago, that would have been me. I wonder who’ll play the hero?”
“It doesn’t matter to our mission—as long as they don’t be getting in the way.”
“Agreed.” The man ran a hand over his beard. “Still straight in and hook east?”
“Until something be making that plan impossible, yes.”
Vol’jin passed another dreamless night, but it was not a wholly restful one. He considered reaching out to the loa, but as was true of all gods, they could be capricious. If they were bored or annoyed, they could let slip a word that would alert his enemies to his presence. As he’d said to Tyrathan, they had to assume their enemies knew they were coming. The fact that the Zandalari could not pinpoint where they were was an advantage. Given the nature of their mission, any advantage was to be cherished.
The next morning, if the sun dawned at all, Vol’jin had no real way of knowing. The clouds had thickened. The only light coming through, aside from a faint jaundiced glow, was the result of the stray thunderbolts rippling through their depths. The lightning never touched the ground, as if afraid of reprisals from those in Mogu’shan Palace.
The seven slowed their pace out of necessity. Dim light made missteps more common. A trickle of gravel sliding underfoot sounded like thunder. They’d all freeze in place, ears straining for reactions. And their scouts had to shorten their lead on the party simply because darkness made it harder to see. This contributed to more frequent stops.
Night after night, the lightning show repeated itself from Mogu’shan Palace. With it came an intensification of the sense of the vale. This was Vol’jin’s place by right, and those in the palace were challenging him. The palace was a flame to the moth of opposition, but none of the seven were to allow themselves to be trapped.
What Vol’jin didn’t like was the lack of any sign of Zandalari scouts. Had he been in command of their force, he would have pushed light troops far forward, even to the western wall between the vale and the home of creatures called the mantid. The stories told of them were the sort that would have quieted unruly children—and Vol’jin meant trolls, not mere pandaren cubs. To not secure that border would be gross negligence, especially when the Zandalari knew they faced opposition.
Two days of no sun had passed before they found their first sign of the Zandalari. Brother Shan had been in the lead, pausing in a saddle between two higher hills early in the evening. They’d reached the south wall of mountains and were heading east through the foothills. The monk signaled. Vol’jin and Tyrathan came forward, and Shan retreated to where the others waited.
The view below made Vol’jin’s blood run cold. A company of a dozen and a half Zandalari light warriors had created an outpost. They’d cut down a stand of golden-leaved trees and hacked off the limbs. They’d sharpened the trunks and stouter limbs, then sunk them into the ground around the perimeter. The stakes pointed outward in all directions save for a narrow gap toward the west. There the ring’s ends overlapped, so any attackers would have to make a sharp turn before they got inside the camp.
The troll’s nostrils flared, but he refrained from snorting angrily. To have reduced a stand of beautiful trees to a cruel fortress seemed to Vol’jin to be blasphemy itself. A small crime, but there gonna be retribution.
Two tree trunks had been sunk into the ground at the heart of the camp, just east of a large bonfire. Twenty feet tall, they stood half that apart. Ropes had been attached at the top of each post, and again to the wrists of a warrior. His blue tabard had been torn from him down to the waist, held by an unseen belt. His flesh had been cut in numerous places, never deeply but enough to be painful and for blood to flow.
Vol’jin was certain he’d never seen the man before, yet he seemed familiar. Four other humans were there, wearing tattered tabards that, the troll guessed, would have matched the one worn by the torture victim. The four were roped together and cowered as Zandalari watched over them.
Two trolls warded the gap, and two others guarded the prisoners. The rest, including a junior officer holding a human sword, gathered around the hanging man. The officer said something that prompted the Zandalari to laugh, and then he cut the man again.
Vol’jin had seen enough and was ready to move on. Then he looked at his companion’s face. “We cannot be intervening. You know that.”
The man swallowed with great difficulty. “I cannot leave him to be tortured.”
“You be having no choice.”
“No, you have no choice.”
The troll nodded and drew an arrow. “I understand. I gonna be killing him then.”
Tyrathan’s jaw dropped; then he closed his mouth and shook his head. He refused to meet Vol’jin’s gaze. “I can’t let him die.”
“A rescue gonna be suicide.”
“It can be done.”
“Who be they that you would be risking our lives and mission?”
The man’s shoulders slumped. “There’s not enough time to explain, not so it would make sense.”
“To me, or to you?”
“Vol’jin, please, I have an obligation.” The hunter closed his eyes, pain flashing over his features. “But, you’re right about the mission. Get everyone else clear. I think I can manage this myself. We have to be close to our goal, so I’ll make this a di
straction. Please, my friend.”
Vol’jin listened to the anguish in the man’s voice, then studied the situation again. He nodded. “Sneak down as close as you can. I gonna shoot their leader. They gonna follow me into an ambush. You be getting the captives clear. Go into the mountains.”
Tyrathan rested a hand on Vol’jin’s shoulder. “That plan, my friend, is even stupider than our being here in the first place. There’s only one way this works. I work my way around to that group of rocks. You and the pandaren get down into that grove near the gap. When the arrows start falling, all the Zandalari must die.”
Vol’jin looked at the two staging points the man had picked out and agreed. “You be leaving the shooting to me. Your people gonna follow you out. They won’t be following a troll.”
“The hanging man is here because they believe me dead. It’s best they continue to think that. You roar at them, tell them to run. Have Sister Quan-li lead them, liaise with the Alliance.” Tyrathan sighed. “It will be for the best.”
Vol’jin measured the distances with his eyes and nodded. Regardless of the complications of human relationships, the troll knew he would be better fighting hand to hand with the Zandalari. Moreover, he wanted to do that. The way they had shifted what the vale should have meant made them deserving of death. He wanted them to read contempt from his face as they died.
“Agreed.”
The man squeezed the troll’s shoulder. “And I know you could have made the shots.”
“You know I would have been better than you.”
“That too.” The hunter smiled. “When you’re in place, you’ll see my signal.”
Tyrathan headed off to his staging point while Vol’jin returned to the pandaren. He briefed them quickly. That none of them protested the insanity of it all surprised him. Then he remembered that Chen had always been a loyal friend and that loyalty was highly prized among the pandaren. There was a difference between compliance to help a friend and blind adherence to duty—the former made doing the impossible actually possible. Moreover, the monks saw the rescue as a bid to restore balance to the world, which made it more of an imperative for them than it was for Tyrathan.
The rescue party slipped into place easily enough, hunkering down in a small grove twenty yards from the gap. Having failed to clear it was reason enough, in Vol’jin’s mind, for the Zandalari officer to die. Vol’jin brought his glaive to hand and slowly smiled.
Four and a half inches.
Tyrathan’s signal came in the form of a single arrow that punched through the officer’s open mouth. The troll had just turned to face his victim again, so the blood splattered two warriors squatting behind him. Before the first could spring up, a second arrow sank into his chest and burst out through his back. He stumbled and, in falling, impaled another troll on the bloody point.
The other squatting troll just fell back, grunting, staring at the blue-and-red arrow quivering in his chest.
The guards at the gap turned to face the commotion around the bonfire. That mistake destroyed their night vision, not that it would have mattered much at all. Vol’jin came silent as death, and the Shado-pan were death’s shadow. Even Chen, who lagged a bit behind, made little enough noise that it disappeared beneath the fire’s crackle and the gurgling deaths of the guards nearest the other prisoners.
Vol’jin raced into battle, his glaive humming as it spun. His first slash opened a thigh; then he whirled away as the guard turned toward him. The Darkspear came around, his second stroke crushing the troll’s head. Vol’jin recognized the delicious scent of hot blood misting in the air and turned, seeking other prey.
Around him the pandaren engaged Zandalari fearlessly, despite the trolls’ larger size and fierce weaponry. Sister Quan-li ducked beneath the slash of an axe and stabbed a knife-bladed paw into a troll’s throat. The Zandalari wheezed, trying to breathe around a crushed larynx. She then shattered his pointy jaw with a straight punch and dropped him with a roundhouse kick.
Brother Dao had appropriated a spear and engaged a similarly armed troll. The Shado-pan parried every thrust, giving ground with each parry. The Zandalari took this as both a sign of the pandaren’s fear and proof that he was winning the fight. This illusion lasted for two more parries, and then Dao swept in, spinning. He snapped the spear’s haft against the troll’s knee, crumpling it. Another blow caught the troll over the temple. That likely killed him, or at least rendered him senseless, thereby saving him the humiliation of the final spear thrust that pinned him to the ground.
Chen boiled into battle, lacking the precision of the Shado-pan but making up for it through experience. Wielding a stout staff, he blocked an overhand blow with a maul and twisted to let the troll’s weapon slide off toward the left. The troll, determined to overpower the smaller pandaren, shoved his maul back in the other direction.
Chen let him, ducking, then hooking a leg behind the troll’s. He shoved, simply and easily, dumping the Zandalari on his back. The troll hit heavily. Chen’s right foot flashed out, stamping hard on the male’s throat. Bones broke, and the brewmaster sailed toward another foe.
Throughout the fight, arrows flew. One of the ropes suspending the prisoner parted with a snap. The man twisted and slammed into the opposite post, hitting the back of his head. A second arrow cut the remaining rope and dropped the man to the ground. The arrow quivered in the post.
The Zandalari recovered from their shock quickly enough. They counterattacked, and two of them snarled as they drove at Vol’jin. One slashed low with a sword. Vol’jin parried it with one blade, then thrust sharply with his glaive’s other end. The weapon pierced the troll’s chest. As the troll fell back, ribs trapped the blade and ripped it from Vol’jin’s grasp.
The other Zandalari yelled in triumph. “You die now, traitor!”
Vol’jin, hands clawed, roared at him.
The Zandalari swung a barbed mace around waist-high. Instead of leaping back, Vol’jin stepped forward. He caught the troll’s wrist against his rib cage, then brought his left forearm up and over the Zandalari’s forearm. Then Vol’jin pivoted to the right quickly enough to lock the elbow and continued to spin until it snapped. Screaming, the Zandalari dropped to his back.
Vol’jin, reversing his spin, punched down into and through the troll’s face.
And as quickly as that, the battle ended. Sister Quan-li cut the prisoners loose. Chen already had reached the tortured man’s side. Vol’jin approached but slowed as Chen helped the man to his feet. The man felt the back of his head, and his hand came away bloody, but not terribly so.
The man looked at the pandaren. “Where is he? Where is Tyrathan Khort?”
Vol’jin interceded before Chen could answer. “There be no Tyrathan Khort.”
The man faced Vol’jin, his eyes filled with fire. “I may be seeing stars, but I know that shooting. I know the hand that painted and fletched those arrows. Where is he?”
The troll snarled. “He may have prepared those arrows, but Tyrathan Khort be dead.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Vol’jin flashed teeth. “He be dead by my hand. Vol’jin, leader of the Darkspears.”
Blood drained from the man’s face. “They say you’re dead.”
“Then we both be ghosts.” Vol’jin pointed south with his bloody sword. “Go, before you join us.”
Sister Quan-li came to get the man, and the other prisoners joined them. They quickly scavenged supplies from among the trolls’ gear, armed themselves, and fled into the mountains.
Chen turned to Vol’jin. “Why did you say he was dead?”
“It be for the best. For them, and for him.” Vol’jin wiped his glaive on a dead Zandalari. “Let’s move.”
Vol’jin, Chen, and the three monks slipped back out of the enclosure. Using some of the branches the Zandalari had cut, they erased signs of the escapees’ path and then their own. They headed west, returning to the place where the pandaren had waited while Tyrathan and Vol’jin had spied out th
e enemy camp.
As they entered the small clearing, a pillar of fire split the night, blinding Vol’jin. Slowly his vision cleared. There, at the far side, a female Zandalari stood flanked by a half dozen archers, arrows nocked and bows drawn. Tyrathan, blindfolded, hands bound behind his back, knelt at her feet.
She grabbed Tyrathan’s hair and jerked his head back. “Your pet, Vol’jin, has caused me great discomfort. However, I be in a charitable mood. Lay down your blade, and neither you nor your pandaren playmates need see what happens when my mood, it be souring.”
23
Anger flashed through Vol’jin at hearing his name on her lips. He stared at the man, who, though trussed up, hardly looked beaten or tortured enough to have given away his identity. Then shame for thinking he had done that followed mockingly. Tyrathan would not have betrayed me.
Vol’jin stabbed his glaive into the ground.
The Zandalari inclined her head in a salute. “I would be takin’ your word, Darkspear, dat you gonna cause no trouble, but since you’ve already caused trouble, I gonna be forced to bind your pets. You should be knowing I bear the pandaren no ill will, but not so my hosts.”
Vol’jin looked around. “I be seeing no one else.”
“Such be our intention. You gonna accompany me, and your luggage gonna be brought along behind.” She paused, her eyes tightening for the barest of moments. “You don’ recall me, do you?”
He studied her for long enough that she’d think he was making an effort. “I not gonna lie. I do not.”
“I didn’t expect you would. And thank you for not lying.” She led the way down to the outpost and around it. There, in the middle—along with a handful of Zandalari poking and prodding bodies, measuring bowshots with their eyes—were two tall, powerfully built figures. Vol’jin had seen their like before, in visions and nightmares.