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

by Stackpole, Michael A.

  End of what? Beginning of what?

  He had not lied when he shared the emotions and memories triggered by Chen’s brew—though he did realize they were harsh and counter to what the pandaren brewmaster had expected. But they were a troll’s memories, and no less valid because they were not those of a pandaren. Any troll would have felt the same thing, for that was the nature of what it was to be a troll. Trolls be masters of the world.

  Vol’jin shivered as he worked his way up the mountain and toward the north. His feet found snow and he squatted there in shadow. He drank in the cold, wanting it to toughen him, but having it remind him of the chill of the grave. Trolls once were masters of the world.

  His father, Sen’jin, had looked at other trolls and had seen the folly of their desires to rise again. Those trolls sought to bend the world to their will. They wanted to subjugate everything and everyone. But why?

  So they could feel the freedom Chen’s brew invoked?

  In an instant, he caught the flash of insight that his father must have had, yet had never shared. If the goal was to feel that freedom, the question was whether conquest was the only path to that goal. Freedom from fear, from want, freedom to see a future, none of those things demanded dead enemies. They might require that some enemies die, but dead enemies were not a sacrifice that would secure those things.

  The troll thought of the tauren at Thunder Bluff. They lived there in relative peace and isolation. While many of them joined and fought for the Horde, they did not appear to be driven to do so. They joined because it was the right and honorable thing, to aid their comrades in fighting the Alliance, not because it sanctified some millennia-old traditions.

  It wasn’t as if his father had advocated abandoning the old ways. Vol’jin had seen the occasional troll—blue tauren, as Chen had called them—who had gone to live with the tauren and adopted their ways. He couldn’t recall if they seemed more or less at peace with themselves, but their disjointed relationship with their traditions left them a half step out of sync with others. It was as if they had traded one tradition for another, and functioned within neither terribly well.

  Sen’jin had great respect for troll traditions. Had he not, had he wished to break with them completely, Vol’jin never would have headed down the path to becoming a shadow hunter. His father had always encouraged him in his pursuit, and had done so by looking forward. He always stressed lessons in leadership, not traditions to copy blindly.

  A comment Chen had made and had attributed to Taran Zhu, about ships and anchors and water, came back to Vol’jin as the troll rose and headed for higher ground and colder shadows. Traditions could be the water that permitted the ship to travel, or they could anchor it and prevent all movement. The loa, and what they demanded of trolls, could be seen as an anchor. The loa and their needs were born in an earlier time. For their demands, and for their glory, trolls had raised great empires and razed civilizations.

  Cutting himself off from them could free him from the anchor, but it would leave him to be tossed about on unfriendly seas. It was the sort of rash and radical decision that his father would have counseled against. It occurred to Vol’jin that the loa could be the tide and waves to propel the ship forward.

  Which makes our history an anchor, ever trapping us in the same bay.

  Before he could explore that thought, however, he came around a corner on the path and found Tyrathan Khort facing northeast, staring off into the misty distance. He hesitated, wishing only to escape into his own solitude, and not wishing to disturb the man’s.

  “You’re more quiet than most trolls, Vol’jin, but I’d have long since died a thousand times over if I couldn’t hear one sneaking up on me.”

  Vol’jin raised his head. “Trolls do not sneak. And you did not hear me.” He watched the way the mountain wind molded a red woolen cloak to the man’s body. “Chen’s brew, or my scent.”

  Tyrathan turned slowly, smiling. “I spent many hours getting your scent out of bedding.”

  “I would not be disturbing you.”

  The man shook his head. “I mean to apologize to you.”

  “You have done me no slight.” Vol’jin squatted, his feet buried in snow. He meant to say that any slight a man might do him would be beneath his notice, but he contented himself with the words as spoken.

  “When I said you were afraid, it was to strike out at you. That sense of you in my head remained. It haunts me still. Less and less, but you are there. I thought I could drive you out by driving you away, by hurting you.” Tyrathan glanced down, his brow furrowed. “That’s unbecoming the man I was, and not part of the man I hope to become.”

  Vol’jin’s eyes narrowed. “Who be it you wish to become?”

  The man shook his head. “I know better who I cannot be than who I will be. Do you know why I was stopped here the day the storm came? Do you know why I was so lost I did not see it coming? You, above all the others, must be aware that such a storm could not steal upon me.”

  “Your body was here. Your mind was not.”

  “Yes.” Tyrathan half-turned, sweeping a hand out over the distant green valleys. “I swore, when undertaking Stormwind’s call to action here, that I would not die before I saw the green valleys of my home once more. It was my pledge to my . . . family. I have always kept my word. They knew I would return. But the person I was, the person who made that pledge, isn’t here anymore. Am I still bound by it?”

  Something in Vol’jin’s stomach tightened. Be I bound by traditions and promises made by trolls long dead? Do their dreams and desires hold me still?

  The troll flicked at the snow with a finger, scraping through the crust. “If you be assuming the mantle of the man you once were, you be him again. If you are a new man, this be your home valley.”

  “So shadow hunters are philosophers, then.” Tyrathan Khort smiled. “I had seen you before, before the monastery. I was with the forces from Kul Tiras—I’d been lent to Daelin Proudmoore. I was much younger then, darker of hair and smoother of skin. You’ve not changed, really, save for some scars. Another hunter wanted to bet ten gold he could kill you. I heard later on that he died hunting trolls.”

  “You did not take that bet.”

  “No. Fix on a target, you lose track of the others.” The man sighed, his breath jetting in white vapor. “Had I been commanded to kill you, on the other hand . . .”

  “You be doing your best in the hunting.”

  “Hunting men or trolls—any thinking creature—reminds me that we’re all animals. I’ve killed men and trolls, too many of each. I don’t have a count.” Tyrathan shivered. “I know hunters who do. Disrespectful, I think, morbid. It reduces people to quantities. I’d like to think I’d be more than a scratch in someone’s journal.”

  “You think that, or the old you?”

  The man bowed his head. “Both of us. More now. There is something about the way the monks live and conduct themselves that is more respectful of life. That idea of balance, and seeking harmony. Do you wonder, Vol’jin, if the new you can balance the old?”

  “You wonder.”

  “I do.”

  “I be knowing.”

  “For me or for you?”

  The troll opened his hands and stood. “Both. You said it. The child be hauling no burden. The child be knowing no limits. But the child be lacking experience, so cannot choose balance. We can.”

  “We can’t escape our pasts.”

  “No? I be Vol’jin, leader of the Darkspears. You be a man, a troll killer. Why be we not dead or bleeding from a fight between us?”

  “Fair point.” Tyrathan scratched at his goatee. “Here, we are not enemies.”

  Again the image of ships came to Vol’jin. He smiled. “You see your past as burden. You wish to drop it. If you do that, you are free, but you do not know who you be. Think of it as a shipwreck. You can never be making it whole again. Be salvaging from it. This place here, now, may be your home. But it be feeling like home because of the memory y
ou salvage.”

  “Run aground, that was certainly me.”

  Vol’jin nodded. “The hunter who died. Who was she?”

  Tyrathan shook his head, a gloved hand rising to cover his mouth. “I don’t really know.”

  “Your sense of her be very strong.”

  “Her name was Larsi. I met her before sailing. Never seen her before. But she thanked me and said that when she heard I was traveling to an uncharted island, she knew it would be an adventure she would not miss.” He hugged his arms around himself. “She— If I needed a volunteer, she was there. She made sure I had hot food, that my tent had been erected. We weren’t lovers. We didn’t talk much. I just got the sense that she felt she owed me something. And since she was there because I was there, and . . .”

  “You plunder the pain. You be dishonoring her.” The troll nodded solemnly. “You would honor her by salvaging her belief in you.”

  “That belief got her dead.”

  “No. Her death be not yours to possess. It was her choice. Happy she be to know you still survive.”

  “That would be one.” The man turned to face northeast and the jagged coastline. “My old life, so much debris scattered up and down the beaches. Salvage will take a long time.”

  “Consider it child’s play.” Vol’jin stepped forward and joined the man at the mountain’s edge. Sunlight shimmered silver off the distant sea. They were too high up to see anything but the play of light on the water, but Vol’jin allowed himself to imagine his own life broken and scattered. What be I salvaging?

  Something brushed over his face, light and ethereal. It felt like a spider’s web. He went to scrape it away but found nothing. Instead, he remembered being a spider, floating, and looked seaward again.

  His vision changed, sharpened by a lens that bent time. Out there, riding the waves, came the black fleet he’d seen in his vision. But he’d been wrong. The vision had showed him another time but not a distant one. What he saw now, what he had seen in the dream, was bare days away, and not in the past but in the future.

  “Come quickly; we have to be seeing Taran Zhu.”

  Alarm opened Tyrathan’s expression. He stared out at the ocean, then looked at Vol’jin with a lack of comprehension. “Your eyes aren’t that much better than mine. What did you see?”

  “Trouble, great trouble.” The troll shook his head. “Trouble I be not certain we can limit, much less prevent.”

  They raced back down the mountain as best as they were able. Vol’jin’s longer legs made for strides that ate more ground, but much too soon pain stitched his side. He dropped to a knee to catch his breath, which enabled Tyrathan to reach him. Vol’jin waved him on, and the man went, his limp barely noticeable.

  One of the monks on the walls must have seen them coming, because Taran Zhu met them in the courtyard. “What is it?”

  “Charts. Do you have charts? Maps?” Vol’jin sought the Pandaren word but wasn’t sure if he’d ever learned it.

  Taran Zhu snapped a quick order, then took Vol’jin by the arm and led him inside. Tyrathan Khort followed. The elder monk guided them to the chamber where they’d shared Chen’s brew, though the table had long since been cleared. Another monk arrived with a rice paper scroll.

  Taran Zhu took the scroll and unrolled it across the table. Vol’jin had to come around so he could face north. He couldn’t read the symbols, but there was no missing the monastery or the mountain peak to the east. He looked a bit farther east, then tapped a spot on the northern coast.

  “There, what be there?”

  Chen Stormstout bounced his way down the stairs. “That’s Zouchin. That’s where I’m building a new brewery.”

  Vol’jin studied the map to the north and northeast. “Why be the island not on the map?”

  Chen raised an eyebrow. “What island? There’s nothing out there.”

  Taran Zhu looked at the monk who had brought the map and gave him a command in Pandaren. Chen started to turn away and follow. “No, Master Stormstout, stay. Brother Kwan-ji will gather the others.”

  Chen nodded, returning to the table. The smile with which he’d accompanied his announcement about Zouchin had completely vanished. “What island?”

  The Shado-pan monk clasped his paws at the small of his back. “Pandaria is home to more than the pandaren. There was a time when another race, a powerful race, the mogu, ruled this island.”

  Vol’jin straightened up. “I be aware of the mogu.”

  Tyrathan blinked, taken by surprise. Chen’s eyes tightened.

  “Then you know their time is past. That you know it, however, does not mean they know it.” Taran Zhu touched the map near the northeast corner. An irregular island slowly appeared, as if the mists that hid it had evaporated. “The Isle of Thunder. Many believe it a legend. Few know it is real. And if you know of it, Vol’jin, then others who know could cause great mischief.”

  “I did not know until I had a vision.” The troll pointed at Zouchin. “I had another. A fleet has sailed from that island. It be a Zandalari fleet. Their only purpose can be great evil. And if we are to stop them, we have to be moving fast.”

  13

  Foreboding slithered into Vol’jin’s guts as Taran Zhu stood as still as one of the stout stone pillars supporting the roof. “What would you suppose us to do, Vol’jin?”

  The troll shared a disbelieving glance with the man, then opened his hands. “Send messengers to the village. Call up the militias. Prepare defenses. Call up your elite troops. Deploy them to Zouchin. Summon your fleet. Deny the Zandalari landfall.”

  He looked at the map. “I be needing other maps. Tactical maps. More detail.”

  Tyrathan stepped up. “The valleys make for choke points. We can— What is it?”

  The old monk lifted his chin. “In your islands, Vol’jin, what resources have you prepared to deal with a blizzard such as the one we had here?”

  “There are none. Blizzards do not happen in the Echo Isles.” The sense of disaster constricted his stomach. “Bad weather be not the same as an invasion.”

  The monk shrugged stiffly. “If night never came, no one would maintain lanterns. The mists have been our defenses since before history began.”

  “But you’re not defenseless.” Tyrathan pointed out toward the courtyard. “Your monks can shatter wood with their bare hands. They fight with swords. I watch them shoot arrows. They are among the world’s elite fighters.”

  “Fighters, but not an army.” Taran Zhu pressed his paws together at his breastbone. “We are few and spread across the continent. We are Pandaria’s only line of defense, but we are more than that as well. Our training in the martial arts imparts to us more than just the ability to kill. For example, we study archery not for its martial aspect—we study it for balance. It is a means by which we can connect two points through an intervening space, having to manage and balance distance and momentum, arc and the breeze, and the arrow’s nature. We defend Pandaria and defend the balance.”

  Vol’jin tapped the map. “You talk philosophy. This be war.”

  “Can you tell me, troll, that war exists only on a material plane? That it is only steel and blood and bone?” Taran Zhu’s eyes became dark slits. “The two of you have physical scars. And deeper scars. War has thrown you out of balance, or your hunger for it has.”

  The troll snarled. “War be imbalance. If it destroys your balance, your balance was false.”

  Chen stepped between them. “I have just come from there. Li Li will be returning there. Yalia’s family is there. The Zandalari will unbalance everything for those people. We have to do what we can to tip the balance back.”

  The man agreed with a nod. “If nothing else, we have to warn the people. Evacuate.”

  Taran Zhu closed his eyes and composed his face. “You three are of the world beyond the mists. Your experience makes you value urgency above ways that are comfortable here. Where you demand haste, you will see sloth as resistance. Where you are skilled at tactics, you wi
ll think me blind. My charge, as the leader of the Shado-pan, is to deal with larger things.”

  Vol’jin crooked an eyebrow. “Maintaining the balance?”

  “War will not always exist. War only wins if the world cannot recover from it. You look to stop war. I look to reconquer it.”

  Vol’jin almost snapped off a harsh retort, but something in Taran Zhu’s words pierced his heart. They echoed something his father had shared, in a private moment, after a predawn rain had left the world clean. He’d said, “I be loving the world like this. No blood, no pain, the world wet with happy tears and the hopes for sunshine.”

  The troll squatted and bowed his head. “Your monks’ skills still apply.”

  “They do. You shall have resources. Not enough to win your war, but enough to dull their war.” Taran Zhu exhaled slowly as he opened his eyes. “I will give you eighteen monks. They will not be the biggest or fastest, but they will be those best able to accomplish your ends.”

  Tyrathan’s open-mouthed expression revealed his heart. “Eighteen monks and the three of us.” He looked at Vol’jin. “In your vision, the fleet, that’s, what, two ships apiece?”

  “Three. One be small.”

  “That’s not going to dull the invasion; it will just knock some rust off it.” The man shook his head. “We have to have more.”

  “I would give you more were I able.” The Shado-pan leader opened empty paws. “Alas, only twenty-one of you can reach Zouchin in enough time to be any help at all.”

  • • •

  Vol’jin had expected that girding himself for war might be familiar enough a ritual that it would reforge a link with his past. Pandaren armor, however, frustrated him. Too short and too large at the same time, the quilted silk felt too light to be effective. The strip scale metal—all bound together with bright cords, along with a lacquered leather breastplate—flopped in places it shouldn’t and made him round in places he shouldn’t have been. A monk worked quickly to extend the armor skirting from the breastplate, and Vol’jin vowed that the first thing he’d do was strip the armor off a Zandalari and use that.