Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

16

Chen Stormstout did a last check of his pack. He was pretty sure he had everything he needed. Physically, anyway. But there, at the temple gate, he lingered just a little longer.

And smiled.

Back in the courtyard, Li Li was organizing an oxcart. That meant she was commanding the Stoneraker brothers to load and shift things. They suffered less because of her tongue’s lash, Chen thought, than because they were afraid of her, and because they’d been growing to like her. Yalia’s father, Tswen-luo, helped with the loading, and his presence did dull Li Li’s commentary.

Yalia left off supervising Li Li and approached Chen. Were it not for a quick glance down as she came, he might have thought her all business. But that one little break, it made his heart soar. “We will soon be ready to go, Master Chen.”

“I can see that. I’m only sorry our paths will diverge so quickly.”

She looked back at where her family gathered in the first group of refugees. “It is a very good suggestion you have to send people to the Stormstout Brewery in the Valley of the Four Winds. It is a hard trip but worth it for their safety. I am very happy my family is among those chosen.”

“That just makes sense. There they can learn all they need to learn for the Zouchin brewery. I should have thought of it before.”

She laid a paw on his forearm. “I know you send my family because only by giving Li Li the mission of getting them there safely will she leave your side.”

“And I am pleased that you are going to see to her safety.” Chen busied himself tying his pack shut again. “It was not an easy thing, there on the road, to have to go away while you fetched others. It won’t be easy leaving now.”

She brought her paw up and caressed his cheek. “You honor me by entrusting Li Li to me, and my family to her.”

He turned and wanted to gather her into a hug, but he could feel all eyes upon them. He didn’t care what anyone thought, but he would not besmirch her dignity. He lowered his voice. “Were you not Shado-pan—”

“Hush, Chen. Were I not Shado-pan, we would never have met. I would have been a fishwife with a half dozen cubs. Had you come to Zouchin, you would have given me a smile and a nod. You would have breathed fire to make my cubs laugh, and that would have been the end of that.”

He smiled. “Your wisdom makes you even more attractive, you know.”

“So does your honesty.” Yalia looked him in the eyes and smiled. “Having chased the turtle, you are not hidebound as we are. Tradition promotes stability but also inflexibility. Circumstances threaten stability and demand flexibility. I like that you can share your heart.”

“I like sharing it with you.”

“And I look forward to more time to share.”

“Chen, are you read— Oh, forgive me, Sister Yalia.” Tyrathan, his pack already slung on his back, stopped just inside the gate and bowed.

“I’ll be with you in just a moment.” Chen bowed to him and to Yalia, then jogged over to his niece. “Li Li.”

“Yes, Uncle Chen?” Her words came edged with frost, unhappy as she was to be doing “delivery service.”

“Less wild dog, Li Li, more Stormstout.”

She stiffened, then bowed her head. “Yes, Uncle Chen.”

He drew her into his arms and held on tight. She resisted at first, then clung to him. “Li Li, you will be saving lives, very important lives. Not just to me, or to Sister Yalia, but to all Pandaria. Great change has come to this place. Violent, horrible change. The Sageflowers and the Stonerakers and others will show such change can be survived.”

“I know, Uncle Chen.” She squeezed a grunt out of him. “Once we get them to the brewery, Sister Yalia and I can—”

“No.”

“You don’t think…”

He pulled back and tipped her face up so she could look at him. “Li Li, you have heard my many stories. The stories about the ogres, and tricking murlocs into making themselves into a stew and…”

“. . . teaching ice avatars and frost giants to dance…”

“Yes. You’ve heard many stories but not all my stories. There are some I could not share with anyone.”

“You would share them with Vol’jin or Tyrathan?”

Chen glanced over at where the man and Yalia were talking. “Vol’jin, because he was there for many of them. But those stories are terrible, Li Li, because there is no fun to them, there is no chance to laugh. The people of Zouchin have sad stories, but survival makes them good stories. In what we have seen, in what Tyrathan and Vol’jin and Yalia will see, there are no smiles.”

Li Li nodded slowly. “I’ve noticed Tyrathan does not smile much.”

Chen shivered, because he remembered Tyrathan grinning broadly at Zouchin. “I can’t save you from those stories, Li Li. But what I want you to do is to prepare the people at the brewery so those stories don’t happen to them. The Stonerakers may be lousy farmers, but put a scythe or a flail in their paws and they will give a Zandalari nightmares. If Taran Zhu and Vol’jin are going to have a chance of saving Pandaria, they’ll need as many reconstructed farmers and fishers as you can create.”

“You’re trusting me with the future.”

“Who better?”

Li Li threw herself into his arms and held on as tightly as she had when she was a cub and he’d head off on his adventures. He returned the hug and stroked her back. Then they parted and bowed, deeply and long, before returning to their appointed duties.

The refugee caravan shared the road with Chen and Tyrathan Khort for only a short time. Li Li and Yalia headed south, while the others went north. Tyrathan called for a halt at the top of a hill, ostensibly to make notes about the topography. Chen watched until the refugees had disappeared around a far bend in the road—at about which time Tyrathan finished his note-taking.

Chen’s heart ached, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel glum. As he and the man worked their way north, always traveling through the countryside and not on the road itself, Chen saw things that made him think of Yalia. He plucked some heart’s ease and crushed it up, just to have the scent. He memorized the shape of a stone, which looked like a big-bottomed ogre bent over to stare down a virmen hole. She’d have found that funny, and perhaps funnier still his embarrassment had he got halfway into his explanation and realized it wasn’t appropriate.

Within an hour, Tyrathan called for another stop, in a grassy bowl a half mile east of the road. To the west lay Kun-Lai, shrouded in clouds. Vol’jin and Taran Zhu would have returned with any monks who, unlike Yalia, were not guarding refugee caravans. There the Shado-pan would prepare what defenses they could and then deploy them based on the scouts’ reports.

Tyrathan unwrapped a ball of sticky rice. “Sister Yalia is worth mooncalfing about, Chen, but going forward we need to focus. So, get it out now.”

The pandaren stared at him. “I have the utmost respect for Yalia Sagewhisper, my friend. Mooncalfing—whatever that is—is hardly dignified enough of a term…”

“Yes, Chen, of course, my mistake.” The man’s eyes glittered. “That each of you has feelings for the other is pretty plain. And she seems very special.”

“She is. She makes me feel… home.” There, he’d said it. Pandaria may have been the place he’d been searching for all his life, but she was the reason he’d been searching for it. “Yes, she makes me feel home.”

“So, marriage, cubs, a life growing old together in the shade of your brewery? Breweries?”

“I would like that.” Chen smiled, then stopped. “Can Shado-pan monks get married? Do they have cubs?”

“I’m sure they can.” The man chuckled easily. “And your cubs will be a handful, I’m sure.”

“Well, you’ll always be welcome, you know. I will offer you the same privilege I gave Yalia’s father. Your mug will never run dry at one of my breweries. You can bring your family. Your cubs can play with mine.” Chen frowned. “Do you have a family?”

Tyrathan looked at the half-eaten rice ball in his hand, then rewrapped it. “That’s an interesting question.”

The pandaren’s stomach twisted in on itself. “You haven’t lost them, have you? A war didn’t—”

The man shook his head. “They’re alive, best I know. Lost is another thing entirely, Chen. Whatever you do, don’t lose Yalia.”

“How could I lose her?”

“The fact that you ask that question means you probably don’t have it in you to lose her.” Tyrathan flopped over onto his belly and studied the road. “I’d give my right arm for one of those gnomish spyglasses. Or the goblin equivalent. Better yet, a battery of their cannons. That was the funny thing about the Zandalari ships: no cannon. Didn’t see anything but trolls either.”

“Vol’jin would know why that was.” Chen nodded as he sank down beside the man and watched the road. “He wanted to be here, but you were right. Taran Zhu needs him more than we do.”

“As I told him, this is my kind of war.” Tyrathan slid down beneath the lip of the bowl. “I’m all tactical, not a strategic thinker. He’s done that with the Horde. I mean, he could be doing this, but neither you nor I could do that. That will be what saves Pandaria.”

For the next three days, pandaren and man crisscrossed the road, working north with painstaking attention to detail and a pace that would have made a snail seem faster than a gryphon in flight. Tyrathan made many notes and sketched numerous diagrams. Chen suspected that not since the court of the last mogu emperor had anyone done so thorough a survey.

They made cold camps in the heights. Given his fur and ample size, this didn’t bother Chen very much. The cold mornings clearly got to Tyrathan, however, and it might be midmorning and a mile or two before the traces of his limp finally disappeared. The man went to great efforts to erase all sign of their passage. Even though they’d not seen much of anyone, he insisted on doubling back and setting ambushes along their back trail just in case.

Through watching and helping Tyrathan, Chen got a better understanding of Vol’jin and why he did the things he did. The man pointed out that the lack of Zandalari foragers and skirmishers meant that the invasion force had come prepared with ample supplies. He guessed that two-thirds of the ships had contained supplies and support personnel. Since no one had headed south yet, it meant they were building up for a sustained campaign. While this gave pandaren forces a chance to rally, it meant their task would be that much harder.

And yet you say you are not good at the strategic. Chen got the sense that Tyrathan had not wanted to return to the monastery. Out here, in the field, he had constant distractions. He didn’t want time to think about Zouchin. Chen had no idea why, save for that haunting memory of the man’s wide smile in its aftermath.

Though the man might have downplayed his ability to think on a strategic level, Chen had seen Vol’jin digest the sort of information they were gathering and weave it into exquisite battle plans. It was one thing to be able to estimate the size of an army but yet another to know what a good general could do with it. Vol’jin was the sort who could see all that and see that little flaw in planning that could make even the best plan fall to pieces.

Chen found Tyrathan most eager to share his thoughts about their mission in the evening, during those silent times when a possible change of subject could have led back to questions about the man’s family. Chen would have pursued that line out of natural curiosity but suspected Tyrathan’s counterattack would have been to ask about Yalia and then tease him about his plans.

The pandaren knew the teasing would be in good fun. Another time, over a mug of ale or steaming bowl of tea, Chen would give as good as he got. But he didn’t want to spoil thinking about Yalia. He wanted to cherish his thoughts and memories. Even though he knew he was being fanciful in how he thought of her, he didn’t want to be reminded of that fact.

So, the two of them let conversation lapse, each happy in the darkness for his own reasons. And then each morning, they would hide all signs of their camp and move on.

On the third day, they spied a croft built into a hillside. The hills around it had been terraced. They’d also once been well tended, but weeds had just sprouted, and some crops had been nibbled by wildlife. Dark clouds were slowly gathering to the north, pregnant with black rain. Without exchanging a word, and less than cautiously, they made their way to the croft just before the rain began to fall.

The farmhouse had been built solidly from stone, with a wooden roof that kept the rain out. The farmer and his family must have evacuated when alerted by refugees or monks. Despite some things having been packed hastily, the house remained neat and clean. In fact, aside from squeaky floorboards, Chen found the place to be perfect.

Tyrathan had other ideas. He rapped a fist against the back wall, including a pantry next to the fireplace. It thumped hollowly. He felt around and found some sort of lever that, when he pulled it, slid the pantry in behind the fireplace. Beyond it lay a black hole, with steps leading down into a storage cellar.

The man went first, a drawn dagger in his right hand. Chen followed, carrying a small club in one paw and a glowing lantern in the other. He reached the middle of the stairs by the time Tyrathan hit the landing. One or the other of them stepped on a switch, for the pantry slid back behind them and clicked shut.

Tyrathan glanced up, then waved Chen down the rest of the way. “I think, my friend, we will wait out the storm in fine style.”

Tiny though the storage cellar was, it had been built with shelves, each containing dozens of jars filled with pickled turnip and cabbage. Carrots had been gathered and stacked in baskets. Dried fish, clearly obtained in trade for vegetables, hung in long chains from rafters.

And, in the corner, a small oaken keg, just waiting to be tapped.

Chen looked at it, then at Tyrathan. “Just a taste?”

The man thought for a second, and was about to answer, when the wind howled above them. The door crashed open, which could have been due to the storm.

The tramp of heavy feet on the floor overhead, and harsh troll curses against the weather, pointed to another cause entirely.

Chen and Tyrathan exchanged glances.

The man slowly shook his head. There would be no tapping the keg, even though it was likely to be a very thirsty night.