Michael Stackpole - Vol'jin - Shadows of the Horde

“It be for the best. For them, and for him.” Vol’jin wiped his glaive on a dead Zandalari. “Let’s move.”

Vol’jin, Chen, and the three monks slipped back out of the enclosure. Using some of the branches the Zandalari had cut, they erased signs of the escapees’ path and then their own. They headed west, returning to the place where the pandaren had waited while Tyrathan and Vol’jin had spied out the enemy camp.

As they entered the small clearing, a pillar of fire split the night, blinding Vol’jin. Slowly his vision cleared. There, at the far side, a female Zandalari stood flanked by a half dozen archers, arrows nocked and bows drawn. Tyrathan, blindfolded, hands bound behind his back, knelt at her feet.

She grabbed Tyrathan’s hair and jerked his head back. “Your pet, Vol’jin, has caused me great discomfort. However, I be in a charitable mood. Lay down your blade, and neither you nor your pandaren playmates need see what happens when my mood, it be souring.”

Anger flashed through Vol’jin at hearing his name on her lips. He stared at the man, who, though trussed up, hardly looked beaten or tortured enough to have given away his identity. Then shame for thinking he had done that followed mockingly. Tyrathan would not have betrayed me.

Vol’jin stabbed his glaive into the ground.

The Zandalari inclined her head in a salute. “I would be takin’ your word, Darkspear, dat you gonna cause no trouble, but since you’ve already caused trouble, I gonna be forced to bind your pets. You should be knowing I bear the pandaren no ill will, but not so my hosts.”

Vol’jin looked around. “I be seeing no one else.”

“Such be our intention. You gonna accompany me, and your luggage gonna be brought along behind.” She paused, her eyes tightening for the barest of moments. “You don’ recall me, do you?”

He studied her for long enough that she’d think he was making an effort. “I not gonna lie. I do not.”

“I didn’t expect you would. And thank you for not lying.” She led the way down to the outpost and around it. There, in the middle—along with a handful of Zandalari poking and prodding bodies, measuring bowshots with their eyes—were two tall, powerfully built figures. Vol’jin had seen their like before, in visions and nightmares.

“Your hosts.”

“The mogu. Rulers of Pandaria.” She smiled indulgently. “You do know dis was a trap, yes? Not for you, per se, but for your archer. He vexed me. Setting a trap for him was not difficult.”

“And you thought once you had him, you had me?”

“I had my hopes.”

They passed to the east, cutting across where the humans and Sister Quan-li would have gone. Vol’jin saw no signs of pursuit. “You’re letting the bait go?”

“If they can stay ahead of what I sent after them, certainly.” The Zandalari gave him a look. “You can’t imagine I would let dem escape. It would suggest weakness to the mogu, and they already believe us weak. If your companions get away, it matters little to me. I’d welcome it, actually. The stories dey tell gonna sow fear among the enemy. That’ll be more useful than some Amani army promising to hold our flank.”

Vol’jin said nothing, hiding the flicker of surprise at her mentioning Amani allies. “Even if they do escape, they not gonna be believed.”

“But it will make for a good tale, an Alliance nobleman rescued from trolls by Vol’jin. A Vol’jin returned from the grave, no less.” She led him over to where two grooms held the reins for sleek raptors. Beyond the saddle beasts stood two carts, both clearly of pandaren manufacture but with mushan to draw them.

She pulled herself into the saddle of the red raptor and waited for him to join her on the green-striped one. “Dat beast belonged to the officer you killed. Annoying I be finding him, hence my willingness to sacrifice him. Ride with me, Vol’jin. Feel what it be to race through this land.”

Her raptor leaped forward and shot away rapidly. His responded to heels dug into ribs and set off eagerly in pursuit. At the moment when she had suggested they race, he could think of nothing he wished to do less. As the wind played through his hair, and his body remembered how to shift his weight as the raptor sprinted, old joys rekindled. The speed and the ferocious power of the beast beneath him, coupled with the sense of the land, were intoxicating.

Vol’jin kicked his beast once more in the ribs. The raptor responded, knowing that was a promise of worse if it did not go faster. Claws shredded golden ground cover. Vol’jin leaned forward over the beast’s neck, laughing harshly, hoarsely, as he caught his hostess and passed her.

He raced on, giving the raptor its head. It knew where they were going, and Vol’jin didn’t care where. Just for that short time in the saddle, he forgot everything: his mission, the Horde, Garrosh, the monastery. With those burdens still back in the bloody dust of the Zandalari outpost, Vol’jin was able to breathe free. He couldn’t remember when it was that he’d last felt like that, only that it had been far too long ago.

“Dis way!”

Their course had been taking them toward Mogu’shan Palace, which was nearing the height of its nightly cycle. She reined her mount off to the east and down between two hills. Vol’jin followed, bringing his ride to an end at a long, low building with high-pitched roofs and wings that enclosed a courtyard in the back. He dismounted, tossing the reins to the groom who had taken the same from his hostess, then followed her through the front door.

Khal’ak clapped her hands loudly, and trolls scurried from doorways and halls, heads lowered. Gurubashi mostly, if the tattoos were correct, but clearly serving under a handful of Zandalari.

His hostess pointed at him. “This be Vol’jin of the Darkspears. If you be ignorant of who he be, I gonna break my fast with your heart at dawn. You gonna bathe him and then attire him appropriately.”

The foremost of the servants sniffed as she looked at Vol’jin. “He be Darkspear, mistress. He should wallow with pigs and steal clothes from a swineherd.”

Vol’jin’s hostess moved so fast and struck her so hard that the backhanded slap couldn’t have been avoided even if the servant had a week to prepare. “He be shadow hunter. He be revered of the loa. You gonna see to it dat he shines like a god. Tomorrow, when the sun reaches its zenith, if he does not make the mogu weep for his beauty and the Zandalari wail in envy, you all gonna feel my wrath. Go!”

Save for the insensible crone stretched out on the floor, the servants scattered. His hostess turned and smiled slightly. “I trust your pandaren be serving you more faithfully. There be times I think even men like your archer might be more suited to serving. We gonna discuss these things, and others, when you have completed your ablutions and be properly attired.”

Vol’jin, though he had no love lost for the Zandalari as a general rule, found her intriguing. “And then you gonna help me remember your name.”

“No, my dear Vol’jin.” Her smile broadened. “You have no chance of rememberin’ because you’ve never heard it. But later I gonna tell it to you and be giving you good cause never to forget.”

Vol’jin would have refused to go along with her having him cleaned up, save that her minions so clearly hated tending to his needs that it tortured them far more than it ever would him. For Zandalari and Gurubashi to wash him, trim his hair and nails, rub unguents into his hands and feet, and then dress him in a fine silken kilt with a raptor-leather belt, their torment had to be all but unendurable. To make matters worse, they were forced to grant him the honor of wearing a small dagger, a ceremonial one, in a sheath bound to his upper-left arm. Such was his right as a shadow hunter. As much as they might like to dismiss him as being from an ill-begotten and disobedient tribe of fallen mongrels, the lowest of them knew they never could have won the honors they now bestowed upon him.