Michael Stackpole - Vol'jin - Shadows of the Horde

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.

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.