Night after night, the lightning show repeated itself from Mogu’shan Palace. With it came an intensification of the sense of the vale. This was Vol’jin’s place by right, and those in the palace were challenging him. The palace was a flame to the moth of opposition, but none of the seven were to allow themselves to be trapped.
What Vol’jin didn’t like was the lack of any sign of Zandalari scouts. Had he been in command of their force, he would have pushed light troops far forward, even to the western wall between the vale and the home of creatures called the mantid. The stories told of them were the sort that would have quieted unruly children—and Vol’jin meant trolls, not mere pandaren cubs. To not secure that border would be gross negligence, especially when the Zandalari knew they faced opposition.
Two days of no sun had passed before they found their first sign of the Zandalari. Brother Shan had been in the lead, pausing in a saddle between two higher hills early in the evening. They’d reached the south wall of mountains and were heading east through the foothills. The monk signaled. Vol’jin and Tyrathan came forward, and Shan retreated to where the others waited.
The view below made Vol’jin’s blood run cold. A company of a dozen and a half Zandalari light warriors had created an outpost. They’d cut down a stand of golden-leaved trees and hacked off the limbs. They’d sharpened the trunks and stouter limbs, then sunk them into the ground around the perimeter. The stakes pointed outward in all directions save for a narrow gap toward the west. There the ring’s ends overlapped, so any attackers would have to make a sharp turn before they got inside the camp.
The troll’s nostrils flared, but he refrained from snorting angrily. To have reduced a stand of beautiful trees to a cruel fortress seemed to Vol’jin to be blasphemy itself. A small crime, but there gonna be retribution.
Two tree trunks had been sunk into the ground at the heart of the camp, just east of a large bonfire. Twenty feet tall, they stood half that apart. Ropes had been attached at the top of each post, and again to the wrists of a warrior. His blue tabard had been torn from him down to the waist, held by an unseen belt. His flesh had been cut in numerous places, never deeply but enough to be painful and for blood to flow.
Vol’jin was certain he’d never seen the man before, yet he seemed familiar. Four other humans were there, wearing tattered tabards that, the troll guessed, would have matched the one worn by the torture victim. The four were roped together and cowered as Zandalari watched over them.
Two trolls warded the gap, and two others guarded the prisoners. The rest, including a junior officer holding a human sword, gathered around the hanging man. The officer said something that prompted the Zandalari to laugh, and then he cut the man again.
Vol’jin had seen enough and was ready to move on. Then he looked at his companion’s face. “We cannot be intervening. You know that.”
The man swallowed with great difficulty. “I cannot leave him to be tortured.”
“You be having no choice.”
“No, you have no choice.”
The troll nodded and drew an arrow. “I understand. I gonna be killing him then.”
Tyrathan’s jaw dropped; then he closed his mouth and shook his head. He refused to meet Vol’jin’s gaze. “I can’t let him die.”
“A rescue gonna be suicide.”
“It can be done.”
“Who be they that you would be risking our lives and mission?”
The man’s shoulders slumped. “There’s not enough time to explain, not so it would make sense.”
“To me, or to you?”
“Vol’jin, please, I have an obligation.” The hunter closed his eyes, pain flashing over his features. “But, you’re right about the mission. Get everyone else clear. I think I can manage this myself. We have to be close to our goal, so I’ll make this a distraction. Please, my friend.”
Vol’jin listened to the anguish in the man’s voice, then studied the situation again. He nodded. “Sneak down as close as you can. I gonna shoot their leader. They gonna follow me into an ambush. You be getting the captives clear. Go into the mountains.”
Tyrathan rested a hand on Vol’jin’s shoulder. “That plan, my friend, is even stupider than our being here in the first place. There’s only one way this works. I work my way around to that group of rocks. You and the pandaren get down into that grove near the gap. When the arrows start falling, all the Zandalari must die.”
Vol’jin looked at the two staging points the man had picked out and agreed. “You be leaving the shooting to me. Your people gonna follow you out. They won’t be following a troll.”
“The hanging man is here because they believe me dead. It’s best they continue to think that. You roar at them, tell them to run. Have Sister Quan-li lead them, liaise with the Alliance.” Tyrathan sighed. “It will be for the best.”
Vol’jin measured the distances with his eyes and nodded. Regardless of the complications of human relationships, the troll knew he would be better fighting hand to hand with the Zandalari. Moreover, he wanted to do that. The way they had shifted what the vale should have meant made them deserving of death. He wanted them to read contempt from his face as they died.
“Agreed.”
The man squeezed the troll’s shoulder. “And I know you could have made the shots.”
“You know I would have been better than you.”
“That too.” The hunter smiled. “When you’re in place, you’ll see my signal.”
Tyrathan headed off to his staging point while Vol’jin returned to the pandaren. He briefed them quickly. That none of them protested the insanity of it all surprised him. Then he remembered that Chen had always been a loyal friend and that loyalty was highly prized among the pandaren. There was a difference between compliance to help a friend and blind adherence to duty—the former made doing the impossible actually possible. Moreover, the monks saw the rescue as a bid to restore balance to the world, which made it more of an imperative for them than it was for Tyrathan.
The rescue party slipped into place easily enough, hunkering down in a small grove twenty yards from the gap. Having failed to clear it was reason enough, in Vol’jin’s mind, for the Zandalari officer to die. Vol’jin brought his glaive to hand and slowly smiled.
Four and a half inches.
Tyrathan’s signal came in the form of a single arrow that punched through the officer’s open mouth. The troll had just turned to face his victim again, so the blood splattered two warriors squatting behind him. Before the first could spring up, a second arrow sank into his chest and burst out through his back. He stumbled and, in falling, impaled another troll on the bloody point.
The other squatting troll just fell back, grunting, staring at the blue-and-red arrow quivering in his chest.
The guards at the gap turned to face the commotion around the bonfire. That mistake destroyed their night vision, not that it would have mattered much at all. Vol’jin came silent as death, and the Shado-pan were death’s shadow. Even Chen, who lagged a bit behind, made little enough noise that it disappeared beneath the fire’s crackle and the gurgling deaths of the guards nearest the other prisoners.
Vol’jin raced into battle, his glaive humming as it spun. His first slash opened a thigh; then he whirled away as the guard turned toward him. The Darkspear came around, his second stroke crushing the troll’s head. Vol’jin recognized the delicious scent of hot blood misting in the air and turned, seeking other prey.
Around him the pandaren engaged Zandalari fearlessly, despite the trolls’ larger size and fierce weaponry. Sister Quan-li ducked beneath the slash of an axe and stabbed a knife-bladed paw into a troll’s throat. The Zandalari wheezed, trying to breathe around a crushed larynx. She then shattered his pointy jaw with a straight punch and dropped him with a roundhouse kick.