Michael Stackpole - Vol'jin - Shadows of the Horde

“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 you 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.”

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.”