World of Warcraft: Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

by Michael A. Stackpole

  “When I be walking in your skin, be you living in mine?”

  “No. Nor would I do that on a bet. Worse than you knowing how vulnerable I am would be my knowing how invulnerable you feel. But to the point. Do you remember what happened after? Do you know how you got to where Chen found you? Do you even know why you’re alive now?”

  “I live, manthing, because I refused to die.”

  The little bug of a man laughed arrogantly. “So you tell yourself. But this is what you’re afraid of. You don’t know. The link in the chain of experiences between who you were and who you are now has been severed. You can look back at who you were, and you can wonder if that’s still you, but there’s a void. You can’t be sure.”

  Vol’jin growled. “And you be sure?”

  “Who I am?” Tyrathan laughed again, but the timbre shifted. Melancholy and a hint of madness ran through it. “You saw what you saw. Do you wish to know the rest of it? What you didn’t see?”

  Vol’jin again agreed with a nod, wanting to avoid assessing the man’s words.

  “I stopped being Tyrathan Khort. I crawled from that place. Not a man, a beast. Perhaps I saw myself as a troll would see me. Wounded, pathetic, driven by thirst, by hunger. I, a man who had dined with lords and princes, eating the finest flesh that I had placed on the table, I was reduced to prying grubs from dying wood. I ate roots I hoped would finish me or heal me but often found those that just made me sicker. I covered myself with mud to keep vermin away. I wove twigs and leaves into my hair so I could hide from hunters on both sides. I shied from anything and anyone until happened upon by a pandaren gathering herbs, humming happily to himself.”

  “Why hadn’t you summoned your companion?”

  That stopped Tyrathan. He looked down, remaining silent. He swallowed hard and his voice grew tighter and small. “My companion had bound himself to the man I had been. I would not dishonor him by having him see me as I was.”

  “And now?”

  The man shook his head. “I am no longer Tyrathan Khort. My companion no longer answers me.”

  “Be this because you fear death?”

  “No, I fear other things.” The man looked up, his eyes glistening emerald. “You fear death.”

  “Dying not be scaring me.”

  “It was more than your death to which I referred.”

  The man’s comment sank a blade to the hilt in Vol’jin’s breast. He had seen the wisdom of the chain analogy, though he hated it. Clearly the Vol’jin he had been had made mistakes that resulted in his almost being murdered. Yet he lived and had learned, so he would not make the same mistake again. But something in his mind twisted that notion such that it made who he had once been somehow wrong, inferior. While Vol’jin rejected that concept and accepted that he was capable of error, he could not reject the idea that his changed circumstances meant he could not be the troll he had been.

  The chain be severed. The links be gone.

  With that loss, however, came new perspective on the greater picture. Vol’jin was not just a troll. He was a shadow hunter. He was the leader of the Darkspears. He was a leader within the Horde. The troll nearly had died. Did the distance from the loa signal the death of the shadow hunter? And did his death mean the Darkspears would die and the Horde would die?

  Does this mean my father’s dream be dying? If his dream died, would it then mock the battle to free the Echo Isles from Zalazane? All the blood that had been shed would be for nought, all the pain meaningless. Event after event, everything in his life and beyond it, trailing back into troll history, all of it crumbled.

  Do I fear that my failure, my death, be leading to the deaths of the Darkspears, of the Horde, of trolls themselves? He visualized the black chasm between lying in a pool of blood in a dark cave and waking up in the monastery. Will that void be swallowing everything?

  The man’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “Do you want to know the truly cruel thing, Vol’jin?”

  “Tell me.”

  “You and I, we have died. We are not who we were.” Tyrathan looked down at his empty hands. “What we must do now is create ourselves—not re-create, but create. This is why it is cruel. When we first did this, we had all the energy of youth. We did not know that attaining our dreams would be impossible—we just went out and got them. Innocence shielded us. Enthusiasm and unflagging confidence got us through. But now we have none of that. Now we are old, wiser, tired.”

  “Our burden be lighter.”

  The man smirked. “True. I think this is why the simplicity of the monastery appeals to me. It is spare. Duties are defined. The chance to excel is present.”

  The troll’s eyes tightened. “You shoot well. You watch the archers. Why don’t you shoot?”

  “I haven’t decided if that is part of me.” Tyrathan looked up and opened his mouth, then shut it abruptly.

  Vol’jin cocked his head. “You had a question.”

  “Having a question doesn’t mean it deserves an answer.”

  “Ask.”

  “Will we get past our fear?”

  “I be not knowing.” Vol’jin’s lips pressed together in a grim line. “If I find an answer, it be yours.”

  • • •

  That night, as Vol’jin lay down and sleep swept the waking world away, the loa proved they had not completely abandoned him. He found himself one of thousands of bats, flapping through the night. He was not with Hir’eek, but he certainly was a bat by the loa’s grace. So he flew with the others, reading the echoes of their screams piercing the darkness in a world rendered colorless in sound.

  It made sense to Vol’jin that he could contact the loa, because being a shadow hunter had been so much of himself. That void, though he could not see into it, could only have been breached by a shadow hunter. All he had learned, all he had endured, surely those were what had kept him alive long enough to escape the cave.

  And the bats in that cave, they witnessed the void, the time I be forgetting. Vol’jin hoped that perhaps this vision, even rendered in the bat’s sound-sight, would show him the void. He hoped the chain could be reforged, yet deep down knew it could not be reforged easily.

  Hir’eek instead, in his wisdom, brought Vol’jin to another place and another time. Crisp edges on stone buildings marked these as new construction, not ruins. He guessed he’d been taken back to when the Zandalari had spawned many troll tribes, and trolls were at the height of their power. The bats circled, then roosted high in towers surrounding a central courtyard, where legions of trolls hemmed in a jostling crowd of insectoid aqiri captives.

  Amani, forest trolls, fresh from their wars with the aqir. Vol’jin knew the history well, but suspected Hir’eek wished to remind him of more than the glory days of the Amani empire.

  The vision did just that. Trolls drove aqir up stone steps at spearpoint, to where priests waited. Acolytes would hoist the aqir onto stone altars slick with ichor, bellies exposed; then the celebrant would raise a knife. The blade and the hilt were worked with symbols, one for each loa. Sound-sight let him image the pommel and see Hir’eek’s face there, a heartbeat before the blade plunged down and ripped the sacrifice open.

  Then, there, above the altar, Hir’eek himself manifested. The aqir’s spirit rose as ethereal steam from the corpse, and the bat god breathed it in. With subtle motions of gentle wings he pulled more of it to himself, glowing brightly, becoming more sharply defined.

  Sound-sight did not communicate that to Vol’jin. That he saw with his own inner sight—something he’d refined and learned to trust as a shadow hunter. Hir’eek showed him the proper way to worship, the true glory and honor the loa were due.

  A voice sounded in Vol’jin’s head—a high, piping voice. You have labored to preserve the Darkspears so there be trolls to worship us. This labor, it be withdrawing you from us. Your body heals but your soul cannot. Won’t heal, unless you be returning to the true ways. Abandon your history, and the chasm grows.

  “But will returning make t
he chasm shrink, Hir’eek?” Vol’jin sat upright, speaking to darkness. He waited. He listened.

  No reply came, and he took that as a fel omen.

  10

  Khal’ak refused to huddle beneath the tiger-fur cloak, though she was glad for its warmth. The storm had long since shrieked away its fury in battering the wooden ramparts surrounding the harbor on the Isle of Thunder, sharp breezes and brisk gusts still cut at her exposed flesh. She’d hoped she’d actually consumed enough ice troll flesh that their comfort with the cold would have been transferred to her, but this was not the case.

  Little matter. I be preferrin’ Sandfury flesh. The desert environment gave it more flavor. It did not do her much good here, north of Pandaria, but there would come a time. When we retake Kalimdor.

  That time would come. She knew it. All of the Zandalari did. All troll tribes had descended from their noble lineage, corrupting themselves as they pulled away. One needed to look no further than physiology to prove it: she stood taller than any other troll she’d met who was not pureblood Zandalari. Their worship of the loa was a game compared to the devotion she showed the spirits. And while some trolls might reach back and honor those traditions—the shadow hunters a rare example among them—they did not possess the traditions as the Zandalari did.

  There were times, in her travels through the world, doing the bidding of Vilnak’dor, that she thought she had found a hint, perhaps a spark of the ancient ways amid the corrupted ones. She sought those who were throwbacks to the old days, searching often in vain. Many were the pretenders to a mantle they claimed to have inherited from the Zandalari, as if she and her tribe no longer existed. All too often—always, in fact—these self-anointed saviors of trollkind were the pathetic product of a degraded society.

  That they failed so often no longer surprised her.

  Vilnak’dor had risen from among the Zandalari, from a long line of trolls steeped in the lore and traditions that had faithfully been maintained and practiced for millennia. He had not allowed himself the distractions that others had. He did not look upon the Amani and Gurubashi empires as things to be reestablished and then elevated. He accepted that their failure marked their inherent instability. To reestablish them was to court failure, so he reached further back into history, to resurrect an alliance that had borne fruit.

  A mogu captain approached her, respectful despite her standing on the walls of his city. A head and a half taller than she, ebon skinned, strongly built, he possessed a leonine aspect that was uniquely suited to Pandaria. His brows, beard, and hair were as white as his flesh was black. When she’d first seen statuary depicting the mogu, she had thought it highly stylized. Meeting them in the flesh dispelled that notion, and seeing them in action suggested that any round softness of form hid only a sharpness of purpose and courage.

  “We have, my lady, completed all but the last of the loading. When the tide begins to go out, we will sail south.”

  Khal’ak looked down at the black fleet bobbing in dark waters. Her troops, including her own elite legion, had boarded in good order. The assault force, save for mogu scouts, consisted primarily of Zandalari. No lesser trolls, none of the lesser races—though she would have entertained the notion of goblin artillery or a handful of their war engines.

  Only two ships remained on the quay. Her flagship, which would be last off but would lead the way, and a smaller ship. It should already have been anchored near the breakwater. “What be the delay?”

  “Concerns have been expressed, of signs and portents.” The mogu captain stood up straight, hiding massive fists behind his back. “The storm, they do not understand.”

  Her eyes tightened. “Da shaman. Of course. I gonna attend to it personally.”

  “The tide runs in six hours.”

  “It gonna be takin’ but six minutes once I be down there.”

  The mogu bowed sincerely enough that Khal’ak almost accepted the sentiment as genuine. It was not that she thought he or any of the other mogu hated or resented the Zandalari. They regretted needing Zandalari help and, secretly, wondered why it had taken so long for it to be offered.

  Many millennia past, back when there were only the Zandalari, back before the mists hid Pandaria, the mogu and trolls met. It was a time when only a quarter of all there was to know even existed. Lion recognized lion. They should have destroyed each other, that first mogu and first troll, but they did not. They understood that in a war, pitting strength against strength, the survivor would be weakened. The survivor might even succumb to creatures far weaker than it. That would be a tragedy that neither race wanted.

  With back firmly set against back, mogu and trolls carved out their positions in the world. Yet as events took place, as each race faced challenges, its ally became forgotten. The mogu disappeared along with Pandaria. Trolls found their own world sundered. And as it was with storied races pressed with immediate problems, the distant past dimmed in recollection, and more recent outrages burned blindingly bright.

  Khal’ak descended the switchback steps. The steps numbered at seventeen. She did not understand the significance of this for the mogu, but then she did not have to understand. Her job was simply to carry out her master’s orders. He, in turn, sought to accommodate his ally, the Thunder King. Power would drive power until both possessed enough to return to their positions of glory and set the world to rights again.

  She walked through a settlement that had been humbled by age yet now awakened to a new youth. The mogu, more and more of them appearing each day, bowed quietly in their way. They understood her significance and acknowledged it because her actions had brought them joy and would bring them more.

  Even though they did bow and show her honor, enough reserve remained in their behavior to reveal how much superior to her, and to trolls, the mogu felt. Khal’ak suppressed a laugh, since her training would make it child’s play to kill any of them. The mogu had no understanding of how precarious their position in this alliance was or how vulnerable they could be if the Zandalari decided to destroy them.

  Cold waves slapped against pilings, splashing the quay. Gulls wheeled and screamed above. The scent of salt air and rotting fish struck her as remarkably exotic. Cables groaned and planking creaked as the ships rode the harbor’s dark green surface.

  She quickly boarded the smaller ship and found a dozen shaman circled in the center of the main deck. A third of them squatted, poking at bones and feathers, pebbles and odd bits of metal. The others stood by, sage and silent—conditions that intensified when they saw her come aboard.

  “Why be you not weighin’ anchor?”

  “The loa, they be not pleased.” One of the squatting shaman looked up at her, pointing at two bones crossed above a feather. “The storm be not natural.”

  She opened her hands and resisted the urge to kick him over the side. “Did you expect it to be? What manner of fool be you? The loa were pleased enough when we set sail for Pandaria. You yourselves said as much. You said you be readin’ the thing same in your bones and bits. Sheer idiocy for the loa to bless our undertaking then, yet protest now because of a blizzard.”

  Khal’ak pointed back toward the palace hidden in the island’s interior. “You know what we have done. The Thunder King walks again. Dat storm, it be honoring him. The world rejoices at his return. Of all seasons, he loved winter best. Of all weather, he felt most alive when snow be stingin’ and blindin’ the world. You may not have remembered him, but the world did, and it welcomed him. And now you cast bones to determine what the loa think? If they protested, how could that storm ever have happened?”

  Gyran’zul, the youngest of the shaman and the one most given to reason, turned toward her. She favored him for his shock of red hair and the strong thrust of his tusks. He knew that and trusted in it to give him time to speak.

  “Honored Khal’ak, what you say be reasonable. The loa could have stopped the storm. They could have stopped our armada sailin’ long ago. While my colleagues may be seeking clarity wher
e none exists, that dey need to seek clarity means confusion exists.”

  The fur began to rise at the nape of her neck. “You speak sense. More of it, please.”

  “Da loa be demanding and deserving of our worship—the worship of all trolls. They value strength. While we have offered each other as sacrifices, and these sacrifices be accepted and revered, they be not preferred. Da loa, as we reach them, speak to us less because they also speak to others. We be not alone in comin’ to Pandaria. Alliance and Horde be here as well.”

  She looked from one to the other of the shaman, taking in the full dozen. “An’ this be what gives you pause? Perhaps you do not fully understand. Perhaps it be not your place to understand. My master has long anticipated others arriving in Pandaria. Vermin always be finding a way to spoil things. To assume we would escape dem here be folly. Contingent plans been made. Opposition will not stand.”

  Another shaman with short tusks rose. “This be well for dealin’ with the Alliance, but what of the Horde?”

  “What of dem?”

  “Trolls be among them.”

  “Vermin choosin’ to run in packs does not make them noble. They still be vermin. And if trolls believe joining such a pack benefits them rather than degrading them, more fools they. We be welcomin’ those trolls who come to see the wisdom of our actions and wish ta join us. We always be needing garrison troops and subalterns to organize various details. If the loa be distracted by reachin’ those trolls and tellin’ them to come to us, dis I favor. Perhaps this be what you should entreat da loa to do.”

  She snorted. “From dis ship. Out at the breakwater.”

  The short-tusked shaman shook his head. “We will be needing time to prepare. A sacrifice.”

  “You have six hours. Less. Moonrise.”

  “That be not enough time.”

  She stabbed a finger at the shaman’s chest. “Den I gonna give the loa a sacrifice. I gonna tie your left ankle and wrist to the dock, and the right ankle and wrist to this ship. I will order the captain to haul anchor an’ sail. Be this how you wish to serve da loa, your fleet, and your people?”