“Yes, my lady.”
“Losing the shaman’s journal, that be deepenin’ my displeasure. The man and his pandaren ally shoulda been captured. I should be having the journal here, now.”
Had the troll attempted to protest the impossibility of her comment, she would have killed him herself as an example for the other officers watching. Khal’ak knew it was quite unreasonable to have expected that he, dispatched only after the scouting party had failed to report back, could have caught up with their murderers.
She toed his shoulder, prompting him to rise into a kneeling position. “It be doing you credit that you reported back yourself. Same with keeping your unit posted to the east. It be good you sketched the man’s footprints in the fishing village and recognized his track here. You got more intelligence than I might otherwise be thinking.”
Captain Nir’zan kept his gaze averted to the ground. “You be kind, my lady. I be lucky that the storm that extinguished the croft fire had not washed away the footprints.”
She pressed her hands together before her lips for a moment, then lowered them and nodded. “Each of you gonna take your companies and fan out along our intended route. Assume the enemy knows you be coming. You gonna set up at crossroads and appropriate places where you can delay any material opposition. If you or any of your soldiers retreat, well, do not. Better you die quickly at da hands of the enemy than you die slowly under my tender care.
“You will be takin’ prisoners. You gonna wring from them information. If dey are individuals of political influence or office, you gonna convey them to me. Their families gonna be beheaded. Their bodies gonna be burned and their heads gonna be posted at crossroads. The deaths of our scouts be attributable in part to a pandaren, so I wish ten of dese beastly creatures slain for every one of our losses. Release one prisoner—someone young or old, not a combatant—to spread the story.”
She leaned forward, lifting Nir’zan’s pointy chin with a crooked finger. “And to you, Nir’zan, be going a great privilege. You identified the man’s part in dis. You and your company gonna range farthest. You gonna find where the Alliance lines are drawn. You gonna, without revealing yourself, capture prisoners. Humans preferably, worgen even, elves if you must, two dwarves or three gnomes. I be wantin’ a dozen equivalent in man weight to pay for our dead. With them, release no survivors. They gonna soon enough know why their people be missing.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“You gonna bring them to the warlords’ tombs. I gonna find a use for them there.” She straightened up. “Go now, all of you. Report back when you have success.”
Sand flew as a dozen troll captains raced to their units. She watched them go, suppressing a laugh of satisfaction. They would not fail her, but only because the mission she’d given them was one at which they could not fail. Success was necessary to build their confidence, which they would need when later she demanded they do the impossible.
She turned, having felt the mogu’s shadow fall over her before she saw it darken the sand. “Fair morning, Honored Chae-nan.”
“You value your dead too little. I would slay a hundred pandaren for each of your dead.”
“I considered dat, but we have located too few crossroads, and there be a shortage of sticks.” She shrugged easily. “Besides, we can always be killin’ more, and I would do so at your master’s pleasure.”
“I doubt dead pandaren would amuse him, but men, these might.” The mogu smiled in a way that demonstrated why executioners often wore hoods. “The man you seek, the pandaren, and, I believe, a troll from before—these would greatly please my master.”
“Den I gonna do all in my power to obtain them.” She bowed to him. “I gonna deliver them myself, and da Thunder King can suck out their souls and sup on their agonies.”
20
Vol’jin found himself trapped in a dream or a vision. He wasn’t certain which. The dream he could have dismissed as his mind digesting what he had seen and been told. The vision—which had all the signs of being a gift from the Silk Dancer—had to be given weight, and that meant he had to see it through.
He hid his face behind a rush’kah mask. He was glad of that. It meant any chance reflection would hide whether or not he truly was within a Zandalari body. It wasn’t like wearing Tyrathan’s skin. Vol’jin felt very much a troll—more so than even when he was in his own skin. As he looked around, he realized he stood in a time before there were any trolls who were not Zandalari.
He stood farther back in time than he had ever been.
He recognized Pandaria but knew if he uttered that name, his host would not acknowledge it. Pandaria was the vulgar name for the place. The mogu so guarded its true name that even though he was an honored guest, it would not be shared with him.
Pandaren, though none of them as prosperously portly as Chen, ran and fetched and carried. His host, a mogu Spiritrender of equivalent societal rank, had suggested they climb a mountain to survey the land better. They’d stopped near the top to lay out a midday meal.
Vol’jin, though his body remained thousands of years in the future, recognized their stopping place as the monastery’s eventual home. He sat, nibbling on sweet rice cakes beneath his mask, in the same spot where his body now slept. He almost wondered if, somehow, he was being allowed access to memories from a previous life.
The thought thrilled him and revolted him.
The thrill came, though he resisted it, simply because of the troll culture in which he was raised. The Zandalari looked down on the other trolls, and though trolls such as the Darkspears made jokes about how far the Zandalari had fallen, being denied Zandalari respect was like a child being denied a parent’s love. It left a hole that, no matter how undeserving the parent might be, was easily filled by the least possible kindness. So, to find himself having once been a Zandalari, or to at least feel somewhat comfortable in a Zandalari’s flesh, answered a longing he sought to deny.
Acknowledging its existence be not enslaving myself to it. The aspect that revolted him made it easier to remove himself from that longing. His mogu host, in not having had his cup filled quickly enough, gestured at a servant. Blue-black lightning struck the hunched pandaren. The creature stumbled, spilling wine from a golden pitcher. His mogu master blasted him again and again, then turned.
“I am a bad host. I deny you this pleasure.”
Vol’jin’s heart leaped at the invitation to torture the pandaren. It wasn’t about being able to prove himself superior to the broken servant. No. It was to prove himself his host’s equal in being able to inflict pain. They were arcane archers shooting at a target, each seeking to get closer to the bull’s-eye. Only the contest mattered, not the target.
No one be mourning the target.
Mercifully, before Vol’jin discovered whether he would indulge in the sport, the scene shifted. He and his guest lounged atop a pyramid in the jungles now known as Stranglethorn. The city that spread out before them had covered a vast plain in stone, much of which had been hauled from afar, from throughout the world the trolls dominated. So ancient was the city that, in Vol’jin’s time, no trace remained, save for those few stones that had been plundered from city after city and now were ground to rubble to fill walls overgrown with vines.
From his guest, Vol’jin caught the faintest hints of contempt. The pyramid was hardly as lofty a perch as the mountain had been—and they’d never made it to the top—but trolls did not need mountains to see their realms. When one could communicate with the loa, when one was graced with visions, the need for physical—mortal—height vanished. And trolls had not slave races to use as personal servants, but then what species was worthy enough to be allowed to touch a troll? They had their society ranked by caste, each with its role and purpose. All things were ordered under the heavens.