Michael Stackpole: Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

Spears and swords hungrily sought them and, one by one, the monks fell. Brother Cuo was one of the last. He spun, his face cleaved in half. Others just vanished in a sea of troll flesh, dying perhaps content in the knowledge that they had taken many trolls with them.

A second explosion blasted the main doors open. Chen breathed fire, wreathing Zandalari in flame. More elite warriors poured through, engaging Chen and Yalia. The captain who had led the attack outside darted forward. Behind him, Khal’ak stood with the other mogu. She surveyed the place as if the fighting were finished and she were only there to count bodies.

Vol’jin cast aside the bow, downed a troll in a blistering burst of dark magic, then brought his glaive to hand. He intercepted the Zandalari officer, turning a cut meant for Yalia, then nodding and beckoning the Zandalari forward. “You be not fearing me now, would you be?”

The Zandalari snarled and went for him. Whereas the mogu had relied on power, the troll fought with speed and skill. His saber whistled past Vol’jin’s ducking head. The shadow hunter slashed at his midsection, but the Zandalari leaped back. Before Vol’jin could press him, he circled, then came in again, slashing sinisterly across the Darkspear’s body.

Vol’jin turned the slashes, deflecting them high or wide. Saber rang against glaive; metal hissed on metal through parries. The blades themselves seemed alive, striking with the speed of vipers, vanishing as quickly as ghosts. Feints and dodges, leaps and strikes, had each troll circling with and through and around the other in lethally fluid motions. The pace of their fight increased, sparks flying.

Vol’jin thrust and the Zandalari leaped back, but only barely in time and with the leeway of an inch. He glanced down. Joy chased disbelief off his face. His belly should have been opened, his entrails spilling out. But, somehow, luckily, he’d avoided that thrust.

Then Vol’jin pushed with his left hand and raked back with his right. The motion hooked the glaive’s curved blade around, ripping into the Zandalari’s back. Vol’jin twisted his hands upward. The blade carved neatly around a kidney, severing the artery feeding it as well as the one going to the Zandalari’s legs. He yanked the blade free in an explosion of crimson. His enemy fell in a limp tangle of limbs, splashing blood over the floor.

“Vol’jin, look out!”

Hands shoved the troll aside. Vol’jin tripped over his dead foe’s legs, landing hard and rolling. He came up as the mogu’s spear, which would have taken him full in the back, caught a battle-worn Tyrathan Khort in the belly. It hit him with enough force to carry him back to the wall. The spearhead embedded itself there, and the man, suspended grotesquely, stared down at the spear buried in his guts.

The mogu rushed forward, hands raised, making for Vol’jin. He didn’t even glance at his spear. The fury in his eyes and the twitching of his fingers betrayed his intention to tear Vol’jin limb from limb.

And that might have happened, had not Taran Zhu launched himself in a flying kick. The Shado-pan lord caught the mogu in his left flank, denting armor. He struck with sufficient force that the mogu stumbled to the right, crashing into Zandalari surrounding Yalia and Chen. He landed heavily on one, but thrust himself to his feet quickly. The fact that he’d crushed a troll’s skull in doing so appeared to be beneath his notice.

Vol’jin scooped up his glaive as he regained his feet, then stood and watched as the mogu hurled himself at the pandaren. Heavy blows pounded the ground where Taran Zhu had stood but a heartbeat before. They cracked stone and shook the earth. Fists flew. Feet swept and scythed and snapped. The mogu, though clearly skilled in unarmed combat and bigger than his enemy, simply couldn’t touch the pandaren.

Taran Zhu ducked or danced back or tumbled and rolled. He leaped over leg sweeps, then slid away from combinations. The mogu shifted forms—Vol’jin recognized a few from his training—yet the pandaren did not adopt the opposing form. He just remained elusive, a phantom. The harder the mogu pressed him, the more easily he escaped, until the mogu finally paused to gather himself.

Then Taran Zhu attacked. Almost playfully he bounded forward, then snapped a kick up and around to the right. It caught the mogu in the middle of his left thigh, breaking it crisply. No sooner had the pandaren landed than he kicked again, this time with his left foot. The mogu’s other thigh parted with a thundercrack.

As the mogu fell forward, Taran Zhu punched up and out. His spear-pawed strike pierced the mogu’s breastplate with a high-pitched pop. His arm disappeared to the elbow in the mogu’s chest. Stiffened fingers dented the backplate from the inside out.

The elder monk slid his paw free and slipped back as the mogu crashed face-first onto the floor. Taran Zhu looked at him for a moment, then up at the spellbound Zandalari. He tugged on his bloodied sleeve. “Leave now, or we shall be compelled to destroy what remains of you.”

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.