Michael Stackpole - Vol'jin - Shadows of the Horde

The commander, a shaman, stood by the door. Dark, pulsing energy gathered in a ball between his hands. His dying comrades’ cries had alerted him to his danger. The arrow meant for him had only sliced his ribs. He stared at Chen with black eyes boiling with venom and snarled something cruel in the troll tongue.

Chen, knowing what would happen if he did nothing—and knowing it would happen even if he did something—set himself and leaped. Not fast enough.

A heartbeat before his flying kick carried him to his target, and half a heartbeat before the shaman completed his spell, an arrow splintered the floor. It flashed past Chen’s ankle, between the shaman’s hands and his body. It caught the troll under the chin, popping up through his skull and pinning his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

Then Chen’s kick landed, blasting the Zandalari back through the door and out into the storm’s darkness.

Tyrathan, bow in hand with arrow nocked, appeared at the top of the stairs. “Lever stuck?”

The pandaren nodded as the trolls thrashed out the last moments of their lives. “Stuck. Yes.”

The man checked the silent troll, then slit his throat. The two in the middle of the floor were obviously dead, but he checked them anyway. Then he moved to where the commander had laid his things, and located a satchel with a book and a small box with pens and inks. He flipped through the book for a second, then returned it to the satchel.

“I can’t read Zandali, but I caught enough of their conversation to know they’re scouting just like us.” He looked around. “We’ll drag the other one back in. Burn the place?”

Chen shook his head. “Probably best. I’ll tap that keg in the cellar and use my breath of fire to light it. I’ll also remember this place and will make it right for these people.”

The man looked at him. “You’re not responsible for them losing their farm.”

“I may not be, but I feel I am.” Chen took one last look in the farmhouse, tried to remember how it had been, then turned it into a pyre and followed the man into the storm.

They headed west, toward the monastery, and found a cave complex that curled down and around. They dared make a small fire. Chen welcomed the chance to make some tea. He needed the warmth and needed the time to think while Tyrathan studied the book.

Chen had never been a stranger to combat. As he had told his niece, he’d seen things he’d just as soon forget. That was one of the small miracles of life: the most painful things could be forgotten, or at least the memory of them would dull. If you let it dull.

He’d seen many things. He’d even done many things, bloody things, but never quite had seen what Tyrathan had done in the farmhouse. It wasn’t the shot through the floorboard that would stick with him—even though that had probably saved his life. He’d seen enough soldiers with shields pinned to their arms by arrows to know wood offered inadequate defense against a good archer. Granted, the man was a spectacular archer, but what he had done there came as no surprise.

What Chen was uncertain that he’d ever forget was the calm and determined way in which the man had prepared the arrows he’d used from below. He’d designed them deliberately, not just to kill, but against the probability that they would not kill. He’d meant them to trap the trolls. He twisted the shafts after they went in to make sure the arrowheads would catch against ribs or other bones.

There was honor in combat, in fighting well. Even what Tyrathan and Vol’jin had done at Zouchin, in remaining behind to snipe at the Zandalari and slow them down, was honorable. It allowed monks to save villagers. The Zandalari might have thought it cowardly, but then using siege engines against a fishing village completely lacked honor.

Chen poured tea and handed a small bowl to Tyrathan. The man accepted it, closing the book. He breathed the steam in, then drank. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”

The pandaren forced a smile. “Anything useful in there?”

“The shaman was a good little artist. He drew maps well. He even had a few flowers pressed into the pages. He did sketches of local animals and rock features.” Tyrathan tapped the book with a finger. “Some of the later pages are blank, save for a random series of dots in the four corners. There’s that on pages he’d already written on, and he actually repeated the pattern on a couple that didn’t have it. The blank pages had the symbols inscribed, I think, by someone else.”

Chen sipped his tea, wishing it would warm him more. “What does that mean?”

“I think it was a means of navigation. Put the bottom edge of the page on the horizon and look for constellations matching the dots. That points you in your new direction.” He frowned. “Can’t see the night sky now, of course, and the constellations are different here, but I’m betting we can work out which way they were going when the weather clears.”

“That would be good.”

Tyrathan set his tea down on the book’s leather cover. “Should we clear the air in here?”

“What do you mean?”

The man pointed back in the farm’s general direction. “You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet since the farmhouse. What’s the matter?”

Chen looked down into his tea bowl, but the steaming liquid revealed no answers. “The way you killed them. It wasn’t combat. It wasn’t…”

“Fair?” The man sighed. “I assessed the situation. There were four of them, and they were better suited to the fight we’d have than we were. I had to kill or incapacitate as many as I could as quickly as I could. Incapacitate meant making sure they couldn’t attack us, not effectively.”

Tyrathan looked up at Chen, his expression faintly haunted. “Can you imagine what would have happened had you burst in there and the two on the floor weren’t stuck like that? The one in the corner also? They’d have cut you down and then they would have killed me.”

“You could have shot them through the floor.”

“That only worked because I was below him, and his spell was making a lovely light.” Tyrathan sighed. “What I did was cruel, yes, and I could tell you that war is always cruel, but I won’t show you that disrespect. It’s tha— I don’t have the words for it… .”

Chen poured him a bit more tea. “Hunt for them. You’re good at that.”

“No, my friend, I’m not good at that. What I’m good at is killing.” Tyrathan drank, then closed his eyes. “I’m good at killing at a long range, at not seeing the faces of those I kill. I don’t want to. It’s all about holding the enemy at bay, keeping them at a distance. I keep everyone at a distance. I’m sorry that what you saw disturbed you.”

The anguish in the man’s voice squeezed Chen’s heart. “You’re good at other things.”

“No, actually, I’m not.”

“Jihui.”

“A hunter’s game—at least the way I play.” Tyrathan half laughed, then smiled. “This is why I envy you, Chen. I envy your ability to make people smile. You make them feel good about themselves. Were I to go out and kill enough beasts for a banquet and then turn them into the most exquisite food anyone there had ever tasted, it would be memorable. But if you came and told just one of your stories, you would be remembered. You have a way of touching hearts. The only way I touch them is with steel at the end of a cloth-yard shaft.”

“Maybe that’s who you were, but that isn’t who you have to be now.”

The man hesitated for a moment, then drank more tea. “You’re right, though I fear that’s who I am becoming again. You see, I am good at this killing bit, very good. And I fear I come to like it far too much. Thing of it is, it obviously scares you. It scares me even more.”