Michael Stackpole: Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

His spear-handed thrust crushed her larynx and windpipe. His fingers drove deeper. Her vertebrae popped, going from hard to porridge-soft against his fingertips. Bone fragments shredded her spinal cord.

Khal’ak staggered back from the force of the blow alone. Her legs no longer worked. She collapsed at the dead mogu’s feet. She stared venomously at him, her face purpling as she tried to take that one last breath.

She failed.

The Zandalari troops stood there, astonishment stark on their faces. Khal’ak dead. Their captain dead. Two mogu dead, and far too many of their comrades dead or moaning and dying inside and out. Already Gurubashi and Amani had begun to pull away. The back ranks thinned.

Vol’jin shifted the glaive to his right hand again. “Bwonsamdi, he be waiting to greet you.”

His statement sent shudders through many. They joined their lesser companions in flight into the blizzard. A few of the remaining rushed forward. Taran Zhu scattered them as if they were flies he was shooing away. Bones snapped, bodies thumped, and trolls writhed on the floor.

Taran Zhu stepped back and gently waved a paw. “Tend to them. Far from here. You may go.”

As if his grant of permission was a command, the last of the Zandalari melted away. A few hauled off their wounded, leaving the far wing awash in blood and corpses. Chen and Yalia limped forward, keeping an eye on the enemy, as Taran Zhu and Vol’jin crossed to Tyrathan.

Bright blood flecked the man’s lips. He smiled weakly. “I’m stuck.”

Vol’jin looked at the spear. The head had clearly pierced his spine and ruptured his bowels. To make things worse, it had a broad cross guard. They couldn’t slide him off the spear, and it had lodged too deep in the wall to pull it free. “Hold still. I be knowing a spell… .”

The man shook his head and hissed as the elder monk felt around the exit wound. “No. I’m done. We did good. I can die happy.”

The troll swallowed hard. “Foolish humans. You be not supposed to die happy.”

“Telling me I’m wrong guarantees I won’t.” Tyrathan sighed. “Let me go. It’s okay.”

The man stiffened as the spear wavered. Something behind him snapped. He fell forward, and Taran Zhu caught him. Vol’jin helped the monk lower him to the floor. Tyrathan had closed his eyes, so Vol’jin didn’t know if he could hear, but he spoke anyway. “I not gonna let you die. I didn’t get the one that killed you, and you be owing me an arrow for Garrosh.”

Vol’jin pressed his hands around the wound, tight to the spear blade. He nodded to Taran Zhu. The pandaren wiggled the haft gently, then slid the blade free. A good four inches of the spearhead had remained in the wall. The bloody edge looked as if it had been worried so much it had parted for metal fatigue. How the monk had broken the blade off, Vol’jin had no clue, and he had no time to think on it.

His hands closed over the wound, the man’s blood seeping up between his fingers. Vol’jin invoked a spell. Golden energy gathered in his palms and pulsed down through Tyrathan. The magic hit the floor, then bounced up. It struck Yalia and Chen in turn. It even flew into the mass of bodies and pounced on a monk buried beneath enemy dead.

He waited to feel Tyrathan stir but was not content to leave things to magic alone. He closed his eyes and searched. He didn’t have to work hard or go far, because Bwonsamdi’s presence blanketed the monastery.

This one be not yours for the taking.

Be you so bold, Shadow Hunter, to tell the loa what we can and cannot be doing?

Sen’jin’s voice rang in Vol’jin’s ear. Perhaps he means that the man be not yours to take yet.

Yes. There be oaths. There be obligations.

The god of the dead laughed. If that be sufficient to bar me, my realm would be empty and no one would ever be dying.

A shadow hunter’s oath. Vol’jin lifted his chin. Perhaps that be sufficient to influence you.

The spectral loa shrugged. You have given me many to harvest.

He did too.

True. And many more gonna be dying in the cold. If any survive to report what happened, they gonna be deemed mad and executed for cowardice. Bwonsamdi smiled. Silk Dancer gonna rejoice in the web you’ve woven for her. So, yes, have your man. For now.

Thank you, Bwonsamdi.

But not forever, Vol’jin. The loa faded with his whisper. Nothing be forever.

Tyrathan’s body shook, his muscles twitching; then he relaxed and his breathing became more regular.

Vol’jin sat back on his heels and wiped the blood on his thighs. “I’ve healed what I can.”

Taran Zhu smiled. “I think we have the facilities to nurse him back to health.”

Vol’jin stood. Flesh littered the floor, but nothing moved save for snow playfully swirling in and blood slowly dripping downstairs. It thickened as the cold hit it, freezing into what could be mistaken for red candle wax. So benign, denying reality.

But the dead didn’t matter. As Chen and Yalia moved to free the other surviving monk from beneath the slain, Vol’jin stooped and gathered the man into his arms. “Lead on, Lord Taran Zhu. It be time for healing to begin.”

Chen inserted the final stick of lit incense into the sand-filled bronze pot, and bowed toward the shelving.

Yalia finished adjusting the last of the carven figures, then joined him and bowed. As they held the bows, white smoke, redolent of pines and the sea, drifted over the stone effigies they’d recovered from deep inside the mountain.

They straightened up, and somehow her left paw had found his right.

“You have been my strength in the last several days, Chen Stormstout.” Yalia glanced down shyly. “So much grim work to be done. I could not have borne doing it alone.”

He tipped her face up toward his with his free paw. “I could not have left, Yalia.”

“No, of course not. The fallen were your comrades too.”

He shook his head. “You know that isn’t what I mean.”

“I know you are anxious to see after your niece.”

“And your family.” Chen nodded toward the stone figures. “The Zandalari invasion did not end here. The mogu emperor still exists, and Zandalari troops are still an army on the march.”

She nodded. “Is it selfish for me to wish it were over?”

“Wishing for peace is never selfish, I think.” Chen smiled. “At least, I hope not. I want it too. I want it because it means that fear doesn’t rule my home and that I don’t have to be away from you.”

Yalia Sagewhisper leaned in and kissed him. “I want those same things.” Moving forward, she slipped her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. “I would go with you…”

“You’re needed here.” Chen hugged her tightly, not wanting to let her go. “And I will return, you know. Have no doubt of that.”

Yalia pulled back, smiling despite tears beginning to glisten in her eyes. “I have no doubt and no fear.”

“Good.” Chen stroked her cheek, then kissed her lips and forehead. She felt perfect in the circle of his arms. He breathed deeply of her scent and drank in her warmth. “And know this: we have many, many years before we drop from the mountain’s bones. I mean for us to spend as much of that time as possible together. With you I am, for once and truly, at home.”

Vol’jin found Tyrathan seated on the edge of his bed, his middle still swathed in bandages. The man had managed to stuff his feet into slippers, which the troll took as a good sign—two days earlier that same effort had met with failure.

“The mountain gonna wait for you.”

The man laughed. “I’ll let it wait. I left my best dagger in a Zandalari in the tunnels. I was hoping to get it back.”