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

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Then he laughed. He was too tall for pandaren armor but too short for Zandalari. He’d dealt with them before. They stood at least a head taller than he did, and twice that if one measured arrogance. Though he disliked the way they viewed all other trolls as their inferiors, he could not deny that their clean limbs and ennobled features made them pleasing to look upon. He’d once heard that they’d been referred to—by a man—as the “elves of trolls.” The Zandalari had found that a great insult, and their discomfort amused him.

  While he was fitted for his armor, much banging and clanging heralded the preparations for battle. Chen proudly presented him with a dual-bladed sword. “I had the swordsmiths knock the grips off two of the curved swords, then rivet the tangs together and wrap them in shark’s skin over bamboo. It’s not quite your glaive, but it’s scary-looking.”

  “Scarier yet when it drinks Zandalari blood.” Vol’jin took the blade by the central grip and twirled it around. He snapped the weapon so it was still, but the blades quivered and hummed curiously. Though it wasn’t his glaive, the balance matched favorably. “You be possessing more skills than just brewing.”

  “No. Brother Xiao was one of those who drank with us.” Chen smiled. “I told him to make a weapon that was what you remembered from the brew.”

  “He has done well.”

  Tyrathan gave a low whistle as he entered the hallway. He wore a long leather surcoat with metal plates riveted onto it. His helmet came to a point and had a mail skirt to protect his neck. He carried two bows and a half dozen quivers of arrows. “Nice glaive. It’ll get lots of work.”

  The man tossed Vol’jin a bow. “These are the best out of their armory. I scoured it and have the best of their arrows too. All field points—the combat arrows have been sent to monks elsewhere. These’ll fly true but won’t punch through armor.”

  Vol’jin nodded. “You be needing careful shooting, then.”

  “With trolls, I draw a line connecting the bottom of the ears, drop it three inches, and split it in half. Easy shot at the spine, and you get the tongue as you’re going.”

  Chen looked aghast. “I think, Vol’jin, what he meant—”

  “I be knowing what he meant.” The troll looked at Tyrathan. “These be Zandalari. Four inches. Their ears be set high.”

  Chen and Tyrathan followed Vol’jin into the monastery courtyard. The monks who were part of the force most closely resembled the man in attire, save that each of them had the monastery’s tiger crest emblazoned on chest and back. They had a single strip of cloth—half of them red, half of them blue—dangling from their helmet’s point. Taran Zhu had not lied. These were not the monks Vol’jin would have chosen, but he accepted that the master monk knew his people best. It did surprise Vol’jin to see Yalia Sagewhisper among the eighteen, but then he recalled that they were going to defend her home and that her knowledge of the surrounding area would be invaluable.

  Vol’jin also realized, as he came up the steps to the plane between monastery and mountain, why Taran Zhu could only send so limited a force. Eleven flying beasts, sinuous and languid, had been hitched up with double saddles and laden with some meager supplies in leather satchels. He’d seen smaller versions of the beasts carved into walls or as statues in niches throughout the monastery. He’d somehow assumed they were a pandaren artistic representation of dragons.

  Yalia beckoned them forward and pointed each monk to a beast. “These are cloud serpents. In days past, they were feared, before a brave young woman befriended them. She taught us what they could do. They are not common these days. The monastery has access to a flock.”

  Vol’jin glanced back at the monastery and caught sight of Taran Zhu at a balcony. The monk gave no sign of noticing Vol’jin, but that did not fool the troll. Though Taran Zhu professed ignorance of the ways of war, he understood well enough that information was power and that access to information had to be limited by necessity. Vol’jin should have been told immediately of the cloud serpents but hadn’t been.

  I been told nothing that would benefit the Zandalari were they to capture me.

  Irritation flashed through the troll; then he caught himself. He was going to war, but it was not his war. The Zandalari were invading Pandaria, not the Echo Isles. And yet, if it be not my war, why be I going off to fight it? That Chen may have a brewery on the north coast? Or to frustrate the Zandalari?

  A thought echoed up through his mind, coming in a deep, distant voice. Bwonsamdi’s voice. Coming up from the void. Or be it to prove that Vol’jin be not dead?

  Vol’jin had no answer, so he formulated one as he slid into the saddle behind a monk. I go to war, Bwonsamdi, to be giving you guests to welcome to eternity. You may be believing you no longer know me, but I be knowing you. It be time you are reminded of that fact.

  At a sign from the monk acting as flight master, the cloud serpents slithered toward the edge of the mountain and hurled themselves from the heights. The beasts plunged toward the earth below. Vol’jin, who wore no helmet since nothing at the monastery had fit, felt the air tug at his red hair, and he howled exultantly.

  Then the cold mountain wind flooded his lungs and reawakened the aching in his throat. He coughed and felt a sympathetic stitch tug at his side. The troll snarled, breathing in through his nose, resenting the pains from his last fight.

  The cloud serpents coiled and sprang into flight. Their scaled bodies twisted and danced, playful and gleeful. Vol’jin might have taken pleasure in that another time, but the contrast of their flight with the grim nature of his mission knotted his stomach. What they were racing to prevent was the antithesis of pleasure, and he wasn’t at all certain they would make it before disaster unfolded.

  • • •

  They arrived in the mountains near Zouchin just in the nick of time. Vol’jin wished they had been much faster or more greatly delayed. Five ships had already entered the harbor. Out on the ocean a fishing boat was merrily burning to the waterline. Siege machines—although the smaller kind suitable to ships—hurled stones to bounce through the village. Their tumbling runs splintered houses and yet, somehow, left no crushed bodies in their wake.

  Vol’jin studied the unfolding battle, then tapped his monk on the shoulder. He circled with a finger, then pointed toward the south, where a single goat track snaked out of the village. Already pandaren had begun to head that way.

  Information be power. The Zandalari cannot allow alarm to be spread.

  Tyrathan whistled loudly and pointed. He’d seen it too. Whether his eyes were really that good, or he’d just known where the Zandalari would lay their ambush because he’d have chosen the same location, did not matter. Vol’jin pointed as well, and the first two cloud serpents dropped from the sky.

  The flight master soared down before them and brought his beast around in a long curve. It ducked below a line of hills, then landed on a small flat spot a hundred and a half yards west of the road. Without a word the monks alighted. Tyrathan had his bow strung already, and Vol’jin did the same a heartbeat later. The two of them moved to the fore and the monks followed.

  This land might not belong to troll or man, but they knew the landscape of war better than the others. Chen, himself no stranger to war, took the blue squad and cut directly toward the path. The red monks, behind Vol’jin and the human hunter, drove north and pushed hard.

  Up ahead, on a hillside, a Zandalari archer rose and drew back an arrow. Tyrathan saw him and fluidly nocked his own arrow. He measured the distance, drew, and loosed his arrow with well-practiced economy of motion. The bowstring hummed. The arrow ripped and popped through broad leaves. It angled up and transfixed the troll’s neck. It entered below the jaw on one side and jutted out beneath the opposite ear.

  The Zandalari’s arrow hopped from the bow, its flaccid flight ending even before the troll had raised a hand to the shaft protruding from his neck. The troll tried to look down at the arrow—an act made impossible because the more he turned his head, the more the end hid from
him. Then it caught on his shoulder and his eyes widened. His mouth opened, but blood gushed instead of words. He collapsed and rolled loose-limbed down the hill.

  Then war unbalanced the world.

  14

  Shouted orders heralded chaos, yet they were issued without panic. The Zandalari did not know panic. One squad was to head south, toward the attack; the other two were to cut the road. Arrows flew at targets unseen, not in hopes of hitting anything, but in hopes of flushing quarry.

  An arrow flashed past Vol’jin’s ear within a hairbreadth of undoing the work that had sewed it back on. He shot back, not expecting a kill. The arrow hit but didn’t penetrate armor. A shout of surprise became a grunt of good fortune. The Zandalari must have thought luck was with him.

  Which be not the same as having the loa favor you.

  Vol’jin judged the eager lack of discipline with which the Zandalari harshly crashed through the brush. The Zandalari had, so far, met no serious opposition and had seen no organized defenses. The arrow that had hit Vol’jin’s target was little more than a toy. It was clearly not meant for war and was equally clearly of pandaren manufacture. All of the Zandalari’s experience of the enemy pointed to a serious lack of dangerous opposition.

  He acknowledges no threat. His mistake.

  Vol’jin, who had crouched as the troll raced down a small hill, rose and whipped the glaive up and around. The Zandalari blocked with his own sword, but late and slow. Vol’jin shifted his grip. He levered the upper blade forward, then shoved and twisted. As the Zandalari’s momentum sent him farther down the hill, the curved blade tip sunk deep into the troll’s neck. Vol’jin wrenched the tip free, opening the carotid artery in a bright fountain of blood.

  The Zandalari stared at him as he fell. “Why?”

  “Bwonsamdi hungers.” Vol’jin kicked the troll away. He stalked up the hill, slashing low to open another troll’s leg. In one motion he came up, whirling the blade around, then snapped it down, crushing the back of the troll’s skull.

  That troll grunted, his eyes glassy before he fell and tumbled through the brush.

  Vol’jin smiled in spite of himself. The tang of hot blood filled the air. Grunts and groans, screams and the clang of weapons, locked him into combat. He felt more at home there, stalking foes, than he ever would in the monastery’s peace. That realization would have horrified Taran Zhu but made the Darkspear feel more alive than he had at any time in Pandaria.

  Off to Vol’jin’s right, the human hunter shot. A Zandalari spun to the ground, a black shaft with red fletching quivering his breastbone. The hunter finished the troll by stroking a knife across his throat. Tyrathan appropriated more Zandalari arrows from this kill and moved silently through the brush. He was death on tiger paws, stalking, slaying.

  The monks ranged to the left and right, moving curiously with the landscape and yet apart from it. Save for the armor he wore, the one closest to Vol’jin could have been out gathering herbs. He moved outside the rhythms of battle, not yet engaged and not long to be allowed that detachment.

  A Zandalari warrior charged him, sword raised for a murderous slash. The monk twisted left. The blade whistled past. It returned in a crosscut. The monk grabbed the troll’s wrist and spun so they faced the same direction. The troll’s sword arm straightened and locked against the pandaren’s stomach. The monk twisted his right wrist and the troll’s knees buckled. Before he could go down, however, the monk’s elbow blurred upward. The troll gurgled as the blow shattered his jaw and crushed his throat.

  The little monk skipped forward, unconcerned. Vol’jin darted toward him, the bloody blade coming up and around. Unaware of a troll’s ability to recover quickly from nonlethal wounds, the monk had taken the thrashing behind him as the sounds of death. Instead, they were the harbinger of an angry troll gathering himself to strike.

  Then Vol’jin’s glaive cut cleanly from front to back. The troll’s head popped free, hanging in the air as the body dropped bonelessly beneath it. Then the head fell, bouncing off the dead troll’s chest. Vol’jin continued forward, and behind him the true death thrashing began.

  Vol’jin and the monks plunged deeper into the undergrowth and down into a small grassy bowl that paralleled the escape route. Without conscious thought, Vol’jin raced down into it and the midst of the Zandalari-led force. Even if he had paused to think, it would not have slowed him. He already knew they were lightly armored skirmishers, sent ahead to slaughter refugees. He attacked swiftly not out of any sense of outrage, but simply because such troops were beneath his contempt. They had no honor—they were not warriors but butchers, and clumsy ones at that.

  A Gurubashi, sword raised high, charged at Vol’jin. The Darkspear gestured, lip curled with contempt. Shadow magic staggered the other troll, eating away at his soul. It paralyzed him for a moment. Before Vol’jin could get to him, a Shado-pan monk flew through the air with a kick that snapped the troll’s head back, dropping him dead.

  Vol’jin’s double blades whirred as battle thickened. Razored metal slashed open exposed flesh. The blades clanked against swords raised to block. They hissed free of parries. The impact that stopped one blade would drive the other in reverse, hooking behind a knee or up through an armpit. Hot blood splashed. Bodies crumpled, limbs awry, breath bubbling from gaping chest wounds.

  Something struck Vol’jin heavily between his shoulder blades. He spilled forward, rolled, then spun, rising. Vol’jin wanted to roar a challenge filled with fury and pride, but his aching throat defied him. He whipped the glaive around, spraying blood in a broad arc, then crouched, the blade held back, ready.

  He faced a Zandalari even taller than most and decidedly wider. He carried a longsword—relic of some battle elsewhere. He came in quickly—a bit more than Vol’jin expected—and brought the blade around and down in an overhand cut. The shadow hunter blocked with his glaive, but the force of the blow ripped it from his hands.

  The Zandalari lunged forward, smashing his forehead into Vol’jin’s face, knocking the Darkspear back a step. He tossed the longsword aside and swept in, grabbing the shadow hunter by the chest. The Zandalari lifted him high, thumbs driving in at the center of Vol’jin’s chest. He squeezed, hard, then shook Vol’jin.

  Iron fingers dug into ribs, reigniting aches. The troll’s thumbs even punched through the breastplate and tore at the silk beneath. The Zandalari roared, defiant and angry. He shook Vol’jin even harder, teeth bared, and looked up.

  Their gazes met.

  That moment of time stretched forever. The Zandalari’s widening eyes betrayed his disbelief at having found a troll fighting against him. Doubt creased his brows. Vol’jin read it easily and clearly.

  He knew what to do.

  As Taran Zhu had instructed, Vol’jin cocked his fist. His eyes narrowed. He visualized the Zandalari’s doubt as a shimmering ball. It sank beneath the troll’s face, lodging right behind his eyes. Nostrils flaring, Vol’jin drove his fist through the Zandalari’s face, smashing bone shards through the doubt.

  The Zandalari’s grip broke. Vol’jin fell to his knees. He caught himself with one hand. The other snaked around his chest, hugging ribs. He tried to draw a full breath, but something ground in his side, stabbing sharply. He pressed a hand over the hurt, but couldn’t concentrate enough to invoke healing.

  Tyrathan hooked a hand under his arm. “Come on. We need you.”

  “Did any escape?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Vol’jin rose slowly, stooping only to recover his weapon and wipe his bloody hand off on a body. Straightening up, he surveyed the bowl. The battle signs read easily enough. The blues had sped along the goat path and come up the hill, engaging the Zandalari waiting in ambush. The reds had blown through the troops set to guard the southern approach. Vol’jin and the others had hit the Zandalari in the flank, rolling them up.

  Vol’jin freed his arm from the man’s grasp and hurried after him as best as he was able. They descended the hill to the road and fou
nd Chen talking with a young female pandaren leading a group of refugees.

  “These are the first ones, Uncle Chen. There are more to fetch. Trolls have hit them before, so they’re desperate to get away.”

  Chen, whose fur already dripped with Zandalari blood, firmly shook his head. “You’re not going back, Li Li. You’re not.”

  “I must.”

  Vol’jin reached out, resting a hand on her shoulder. “You must listen.”

  She leaped back into a defensive crouch. “He’s one of them.”

  “No, he’s my friend. Vol’jin. You remember him.”

  Li Li took a closer look. “You look better with your ear back on.”

  The troll stood tall, arching his back. “You must be taking these people south.”

  “But there are more trolls coming, and more people need rescuing.”

  Chen pointed toward the sea. “And most of them have never been outside their village. Take them to the Temple of the White Tiger, Li Li.”

  “Will they be safe there?”

  “More easily defended.” Vol’jin waved the flight master over. “You need to ferry people. Slow people. The blues gonna gather them.”

  “Good plan.” Tyrathan looked over at the reds. “I’ll use the other monks to harry the Zandalari.”

  “You?”

  The man nodded. “You’re hurt.”

  “You limp and I heal fast.”

  “Vol’jin, what has to be done here is my kind of war. Slow them down. Delay them. Sting them. Hurt them. We will buy you the time to get these people clear.” Tyrathan patted a quiver of Zandalari arrows. “A number of the skirmishers dropped these and I mean to return lost property.”