Brother Dao had appropriated a spear and engaged a similarly armed troll. The Shado-pan parried every thrust, giving ground with each parry. The Zandalari took this as both a sign of the pandaren’s fear and proof that he was winning the fight. This illusion lasted for two more parries, and then Dao swept in, spinning. He snapped the spear’s haft against the troll’s knee, crumpling it. Another blow caught the troll over the temple. That likely killed him, or at least rendered him senseless, thereby saving him the humiliation of the final spear thrust that pinned him to the ground.
Chen boiled into battle, lacking the precision of the Shado-pan but making up for it through experience. Wielding a stout staff, he blocked an overhand blow with a maul and twisted to let the troll’s weapon slide off toward the left. The troll, determined to overpower the smaller pandaren, shoved his maul back in the other direction.
Chen let him, ducking, then hooking a leg behind the troll’s. He shoved, simply and easily, dumping the Zandalari on his back. The troll hit heavily. Chen’s right foot flashed out, stamping hard on the male’s throat. Bones broke, and the brewmaster sailed toward another foe.
Throughout the fight, arrows flew. One of the ropes suspending the prisoner parted with a snap. The man twisted and slammed into the opposite post, hitting the back of his head. A second arrow cut the remaining rope and dropped the man to the ground. The arrow quivered in the post.
The Zandalari recovered from their shock quickly enough. They counterattacked, and two of them snarled as they drove at Vol’jin. One slashed low with a sword. Vol’jin parried it with one blade, then thrust sharply with his glaive’s other end. The weapon pierced the troll’s chest. As the troll fell back, ribs trapped the blade and ripped it from Vol’jin’s grasp.
The other Zandalari yelled in triumph. “You die now, traitor!”
Vol’jin, hands clawed, roared at him.
The Zandalari swung a barbed mace around waist-high. Instead of leaping back, Vol’jin stepped forward. He caught the troll’s wrist against his rib cage, then brought his left forearm up and over the Zandalari’s forearm. Then Vol’jin pivoted to the right quickly enough to lock the elbow and continued to spin until it snapped. Screaming, the Zandalari dropped to his back.
Vol’jin, reversing his spin, punched down into and through the troll’s face.
And as quickly as that, the battle ended. Sister Quan-li cut the prisoners loose. Chen already had reached the tortured man’s side. Vol’jin approached but slowed as Chen helped the man to his feet. The man felt the back of his head, and his hand came away bloody, but not terribly so.
The man looked at the pandaren. “Where is he? Where is Tyrathan Khort?”
Vol’jin interceded before Chen could answer. “There be no Tyrathan Khort.”
The man faced Vol’jin, his eyes filled with fire. “I may be seeing stars, but I know that shooting. I know the hand that painted and fletched those arrows. Where is he?”
The troll snarled. “He may have prepared those arrows, but Tyrathan Khort be dead.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Vol’jin flashed teeth. “He be dead by my hand. Vol’jin, leader of the Darkspears.”
Blood drained from the man’s face. “They say you’re dead.”
“Then we both be ghosts.” Vol’jin pointed south with his bloody sword. “Go, before you join us.”
Sister Quan-li came to get the man, and the other prisoners joined them. They quickly scavenged supplies from among the trolls’ gear, armed themselves, and fled into the mountains.
Chen turned to Vol’jin. “Why did you say he was dead?”
“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.”
23
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.