Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

34

Khal’ak’s right hand came up and whipped forward before Vol’jin could shout a warning. A slender knife spun through the air at the eldest monk. As it sped toward its target, she scooped a sword up from the ground and charged for Taran Zhu.

The pandaren monk’s right paw came up in a circular parry, from inside toward out. He batted the dagger away with the back of his paw, redirecting it. In the blink of an eye, it quivered in a Zandalari, lodging in his throat before the victim or his companions had consciously realized their leader had thrown it, and well before any of them had taken the chance to heed the monk’s warning. Stunned by unfolding events, they remained rooted in place.

Vol’jin interposed himself between her and the monk. “I be knowing better than to offer you mercy.”

Her eyes blazed. “You be betraying your betters.”

“Shadow hunters have no betters.”

Khal’ak attacked, as skillfully as the troll he’d just killed and perhaps a bit quicker. Her blade flashed through serpentine twists and cuts. He didn’t block many blows, just parried them or twisted aside. She gave him no openings to attack, but it would not have mattered if she had. His muscles already burned with fatigue. He wasn’t certain he’d be fast enough to get past her guard. And she seemed to be waiting for something, having had the benefit of watching him fight.

What has she seen?

As if she’d read his mind, Khal’ak pressed him. She slashed high and low, circling to the right, to his strong side. She might have noticed his favoring of his left shoulder, but he’d recovered from that damage. If it wasn’t that, what was she seeking to exploit?

Then he realized that it didn’t matter what she had seen, because he knew what she had not seen. As she slashed at him with a cut aimed at his belly, he shifted his weapon to his left hand. He didn’t turn the cut with his glaive; he just slowed it and stepped forward. Her sword still caught him over the hip, right where Deng-Tai had hit him with the spear haft. He felt the pain, but it seemed incredibly far away.

His left arm came down, trapping her wrist against his side. She looked up, fury in her eyes threatening to arc out and burn him. He met it with contempt, not because she was an enemy, but because she was the corruption that would destroy Pandaria and all trolls. He held her gaze for just long enough that he could believe she understood, and then he killed her.

Quickly.

Remorselessly.

Every time she’d seen him fight, he’d used a glaive and fought in a traditional manner. The only thing she hadn’t seen and didn’t know about was the training he’d had at the paws of the Shado-pan. Fitting I kill her with my bare hands.

His spear-handed thrust crushed her larynx and windpipe. His fingers drove deeper. Her vertebrae popped, going from hard to porridge-soft against his fingertips. Bone fragments shredded her spinal cord.

Khal’ak staggered back from the force of the blow alone. Her legs no longer worked. She collapsed at the dead mogu’s feet. She stared venomously at him, her face purpling as she tried to take that one last breath.

She failed.

The Zandalari troops stood there, astonishment stark on their faces. Khal’ak dead. Their captain dead. Two mogu dead, and far too many of their comrades dead or moaning and dying inside and out. Already Gurubashi and Amani had begun to pull away. The back ranks thinned.

Vol’jin shifted the glaive to his right hand again. “Bwonsamdi, he be waiting to greet you.”

His statement sent shudders through many. They joined their lesser companions in flight into the blizzard. A few of the remaining rushed forward. Taran Zhu scattered them as if they were flies he was shooing away. Bones snapped, bodies thumped, and trolls writhed on the floor.

Taran Zhu stepped back and gently waved a paw. “Tend to them. Far from here. You may go.”

As if his grant of permission was a command, the last of the Zandalari melted away. A few hauled off their wounded, leaving the far wing awash in blood and corpses. Chen and Yalia limped forward, keeping an eye on the enemy, as Taran Zhu and Vol’jin crossed to Tyrathan.

Bright blood flecked the man’s lips. He smiled weakly. “I’m stuck.”

Vol’jin looked at the spear. The head had clearly pierced his spine and ruptured his bowels. To make things worse, it had a broad cross guard. They couldn’t slide him off the spear, and it had lodged too deep in the wall to pull it free. “Hold still. I be knowing a spell… .”

The man shook his head and hissed as the elder monk felt around the exit wound. “No. I’m done. We did good. I can die happy.”

The troll swallowed hard. “Foolish humans. You be not supposed to die happy.”

“Telling me I’m wrong guarantees I won’t.” Tyrathan sighed. “Let me go. It’s okay.”

The man stiffened as the spear wavered. Something behind him snapped. He fell forward, and Taran Zhu caught him. Vol’jin helped the monk lower him to the floor. Tyrathan had closed his eyes, so Vol’jin didn’t know if he could hear, but he spoke anyway. “I not gonna let you die. I didn’t get the one that killed you, and you be owing me an arrow for Garrosh.”

Vol’jin pressed his hands around the wound, tight to the spear blade. He nodded to Taran Zhu. The pandaren wiggled the haft gently, then slid the blade free. A good four inches of the spearhead had remained in the wall. The bloody edge looked as if it had been worried so much it had parted for metal fatigue. How the monk had broken the blade off, Vol’jin had no clue, and he had no time to think on it.

His hands closed over the wound, the man’s blood seeping up between his fingers. Vol’jin invoked a spell. Golden energy gathered in his palms and pulsed down through Tyrathan. The magic hit the floor, then bounced up. It struck Yalia and Chen in turn. It even flew into the mass of bodies and pounced on a monk buried beneath enemy dead.

He waited to feel Tyrathan stir but was not content to leave things to magic alone. He closed his eyes and searched. He didn’t have to work hard or go far, because Bwonsamdi’s presence blanketed the monastery.

This one be not yours for the taking.

Be you so bold, Shadow Hunter, to tell the loa what we can and cannot be doing?

Sen’jin’s voice rang in Vol’jin’s ear. Perhaps he means that the man be not yours to take yet.

Yes. There be oaths. There be obligations.

The god of the dead laughed. If that be sufficient to bar me, my realm would be empty and no one would ever be dying.

A shadow hunter’s oath. Vol’jin lifted his chin. Perhaps that be sufficient to influence you.

The spectral loa shrugged. You have given me many to harvest.

He did too.

True. And many more gonna be dying in the cold. If any survive to report what happened, they gonna be deemed mad and executed for cowardice. Bwonsamdi smiled. Silk Dancer gonna rejoice in the web you’ve woven for her. So, yes, have your man. For now.

Thank you, Bwonsamdi.

But not forever, Vol’jin. The loa faded with his whisper. Nothing be forever.

Tyrathan’s body shook, his muscles twitching; then he relaxed and his breathing became more regular.

Vol’jin sat back on his heels and wiped the blood on his thighs. “I’ve healed what I can.”

Taran Zhu smiled. “I think we have the facilities to nurse him back to health.”

Vol’jin stood. Flesh littered the floor, but nothing moved save for snow playfully swirling in and blood slowly dripping downstairs. It thickened as the cold hit it, freezing into what could be mistaken for red candle wax. So benign, denying reality.

But the dead didn’t matter. As Chen and Yalia moved to free the other surviving monk from beneath the slain, Vol’jin stooped and gathered the man into his arms. “Lead on, Lord Taran Zhu. It be time for healing to begin.”

Chen inserted the final stick of lit incense into the sand-filled bronze pot, and bowed toward the shelving.

Yalia finished adjusting the last of the carven figures, then joined him and bowed. As they held the bows, white smoke, redolent of pines and the sea, drifted over the stone effigies they’d recovered from deep inside the mountain.

They straightened up, and somehow her left paw had found his right.

“You have been my strength in the last several days, Chen Stormstout.” Yalia glanced down shyly. “So much grim work to be done. I could not have borne doing it alone.”

He tipped her face up toward his with his free paw. “I could not have left, Yalia.”

“No, of course not. The fallen were your comrades too.”

He shook his head. “You know that isn’t what I mean.”

“I know you are anxious to see after your niece.”

“And your family.” Chen nodded toward the stone figures. “The Zandalari invasion did not end here. The mogu emperor still exists, and Zandalari troops are still an army on the march.”

She nodded. “Is it selfish for me to wish it were over?”

“Wishing for peace is never selfish, I think.” Chen smiled. “At least, I hope not. I want it too. I want it because it means that fear doesn’t rule my home and that I don’t have to be away from you.”

Yalia Sagewhisper leaned in and kissed him. “I want those same things.” Moving forward, she slipped her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. “I would go with you…”

“You’re needed here.” Chen hugged her tightly, not wanting to let her go. “And I will return, you know. Have no doubt of that.”

Yalia pulled back, smiling despite tears beginning to glisten in her eyes. “I have no doubt and no fear.”

“Good.” Chen stroked her cheek, then kissed her lips and forehead. She felt perfect in the circle of his arms. He breathed deeply of her scent and drank in her warmth. “And know this: we have many, many years before we drop from the mountain’s bones. I mean for us to spend as much of that time as possible together. With you I am, for once and truly, at home.”

Vol’jin found Tyrathan seated on the edge of his bed, his middle still swathed in bandages. The man had managed to stuff his feet into slippers, which the troll took as a good sign—two days earlier that same effort had met with failure.

“The mountain gonna wait for you.”

The man laughed. “I’ll let it wait. I left my best dagger in a Zandalari in the tunnels. I was hoping to get it back.”

“I be wishing you needed to recover two dozen.”

Tyrathan nodded. “So do I. When I went down there, I never thought I’d see the light of day again.”

Khal’ak’s elite troops had broken through into the tunnels beneath the monastery and overwhelmed the monks in the Snowdrift Dojo. Their initial drive into the building had bypassed Tyrathan. He’d entered the tunnels, and Vol’jin had seen his handiwork. The man had gone after the Zandalari who were meant to get into the Sealed Chambers and had stopped many of them. Arrows were useless down in the dark, so the man had killed with sword and dagger and rocks as big as his head. The troll was certain that some of his victims were yet to be found because they’d crawled off to die.

“I be very glad you made it out. You saved my life.”

“And you, mine.” Tyrathan glanced down, the ghost of a smile twisting his lips. “What I said, about letting me go…”

“That be the pain talking.”

“It was, but not the physical pain.” The man looked at his own hands lying open and benign against his thighs. “I think I liked the idea of being dead because it meant I could run from pain—the pain of my family situation. What you said about family, however, in making your decision to refuse the Zandalari, that has stuck with me. Our decision to stay and to fight was born out of courage and honor and a sense of family.”

“A lot of foolishness too, many would be saying.”

“They’d be right, but for the wrong reasons.” Tyrathan sighed. “My willingness to die wasn’t courageous. And no matter who I am, I don’t want to live without courage or honor.”

Vol’jin nodded. “I agree. There be much work to be done that will require both of those qualities—and more. Including a marksman’s eye.”

“I know. And I will be fletching you that arrow for Garrosh.”

“But you have things you have to be doing before then.”

“You learned too much of me when you were in my mind.”

Vol’jin shook his head, then rested both hands on the man’s shoulders. “I be learning more while in your company.”

Tyrathan smiled. “I’ll stay here for a bit, recovering, helping out. Then I honor that oath to see the valleys of my homeland again. While my vanishing might have been best for me, I’m lying to myself if I think it is best for my family. My children need to know me. My wife needs to know I understand. I may not be able to fix things, but to let a lie suggest things are not broken isn’t good. Not for them. Not for me. It’s not a door I want to travel through.”

“I understand. You be braver than most in doing this.” Vol’jin stepped back, folding his arms over his chest. “And I trust you gonna be there with that arrow when I be ready to use it.”

“Just as I trust you’ll get the one who gets me.” The man levered himself unsteadily to his feet. “And I am hoping your discharge of that obligation will yet be many years coming.”

Vol’jin stood on the island where he’d slain the mogu, and looked out toward the Grove of Falling Blossoms. Snow blanketed everything. He couldn’t be certain if lumps were rocks or frozen corpses. It didn’t matter. The white flakes, some of which rose on swirling winds, hid everything with their innocence.

Vol’jin willingly let them seduce him into believing the world, at least for a moment, was at peace.

Taran Zhu appeared at his side. “Peace is a natural state. You may enjoy it here for as long as you wish.”

“You be very kind, Lord Taran Zhu.”

The pandaren smiled. “But you will not enjoy it for as long as you should.”

“To be doing so would be selfish.” Vol’jin turned toward him. “The peace you be offering me, though welcome be it, would be as much a trap as a skull or a helmet.”

Taran Zhu’s head came up. “Do you really understand?”

“Yes. The parable be not about skulls or helmets; it be about the limitations one accepts when you define yourself. A crab that sees itself as a crab be defined not by the shelter it seeks but by its very need to seek shelter. I be not a crab. My future be not depending on what I can find to act as a shell. I have many more choices.”

“And many more obligations.”

“Very true.” The troll drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Garrosh had betrayed the Horde and would continue to do so. That was in his nature. He allowed himself to be defined by his selfish desires and fears. He would never change, and would resort to many things, terrible things, to solidify his position. In doing so, he would shed rivers of blood and get washed away in the resulting flood.

“You, Lord Taran Zhu, have your family to care for here. So does Chen. Tyrathan gonna return to his family.” Vol’jin’s eyes tightened. “The Horde be my family. Just as Tyrathan can’t let his family believe he be dead, nor can I do that to the Horde. They deserve peace, too, and my accepting it here would deny it to them.”

“This a shadow hunter cannot do?”

“Can or cannot doesn’t matter. Shadow hunter or troll doesn’t matter.” Vol’jin slowly nodded. “Vol’jin Darkspear not gonna do it. That be not who I am. Time come that I be reminding my enemies of that fact and making them pay for the evil they’ve wrought.”