31
The Amani’s scream tightened Khal’ak’s flesh. She waited, listening for its repeat, for it to be abruptly cut off, or for the rumble of stones followed by other screams. The Amani did scream again, but it tailed into a pitiful mewing. Either he wasn’t hurt as badly as he was frightened, or he’d fainted from the pain.
Khal’ak had not intended to press Amani or Gurubashi into combat roles. She’d brought sufficient of each along with her because her Zandalari couldn’t be expected to cook and clean and carry for themselves. Unfortunately, her troops tended to stoicism when it came to the troll traps that had been laid out. They wouldn’t scream or panic, which meant they didn’t alert their companions to danger.
There had been dangers aplenty, and she knew they were mostly the shadow hunter’s doing. Pit traps and deadfalls, rockslides and showers of darts from small siege machines, all had been arrayed to take maximum advantage of the terrain. The path forced troops to slow and bunch in places. The Zandalari learned to be on guard in such areas, minimizing the actual damage done to her troops.
Physical damage, anyway.
Because trolls healed quickly, that which did not kill them immediately allowed them to recover. While the Zandalari viewed their bandages as badges of courage and dismissed the meager efforts against them, Khal’ak could already see the psychological effect it was having on them. They moved more cautiously, which wasn’t necessarily bad for an army, but her people became more tentative when she needed courage and decisiveness.
At places where there appeared a logical but difficult climb to work around a bottleneck, her troops would skillfully scale the sheer face. At the top they might find signs where a small siege engine had been set up, and then tracks leading back to the entrance to a warren of caves. The caves might be trapped, were always tight for the large Zandalari, and invariably sealed fifty or a hundred feet along a tortuous route.
As frustrating as that was, it wasn’t until hours later that the climbers, who had scratched fingers or debris trapped beneath nails, suddenly found their extremities tingling. They began to swell. Handholds had been smeared with toxins that wouldn’t kill anyone but incapacitated them by triggering hideous hallucinations. Thereafter, the presence of dampness or an oily residue gave them cause to hesitate. They’d concentrate on seeing if they had been poisoned, which meant they were distracted from their real task.
Vol’jin be attacking their minds, effectively killing them.
The shadow hunter also taunted them. Khal’ak flipped a small wooden token between her thumb and fingers. On one side had been burned the troll symbol for the number 33. On the other side, it had been rendered in mogu. They found the tokens scattered in the bottoms of pits or at sites where scouts had clearly been observing them. Rumor had it that one had even been found in her tent, hinting that the shadow hunter could have killed her as easily as he’d killed troops on the Isle of Thunder. The number, some determined, referred to the millennia since the fall of the Thunder King (through odd tricks of numerology), or to Vol’jin as the thirty-third shadow hunter of a particular tradition. None could actually state which tradition, and she’d been forced to kill an Amani to make an example of the perils of rumor mongering, but once the idea had taken root, there was no stopping it.
The theory she liked best was that every defender had pledged that they would slay thirty-three before they died, which meant her force faced less than twenty defenders. While such pledges had tactical value only in minstrels’ songs, it did make her wary. Intending me for one of your thirty-three, Vol’jin?
She listened on the wind for an answer. She heard nothing.
Captain Nir’zan ran up and saluted. “An Amani cook strayed out of cleared areas to be relievin’ himself. Found a likely spot. Ground crumbled beneath his feet. He fell forward on his knees, impaling his thighs, abdomen, and one hand. He will live.”
“Has he been freed yet?”
“No.”
“Can we be arranging for everyone to march past him as we proceed this morning?”
The troll warrior nodded. “As you desire, my lady.”
“Good. If he has the fortitude to survive until all have passed, free him.”
“Yes, mistress.”
He did not move, so she raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“A runner brought signals from the fleet. They will be returnin’ to Zouchin’s shores. There’s a severe storm coming in from the north. Heavy winds, ice, snow. It gonna delay the sailing from the Isle of Thunder too.”
“Good. Dat be giving us more time to consolidate Pandaria after we destroy the monastery.” Khal’ak glanced higher up the mountain at their destination, then down at her camp. The tents had been spread out and as often as not pitched on the backslope of hills to protect them from slides and assaults. They’d kept cold camps simply to make it difficult for the enemy to determine their numbers.
She tapped a finger against her lips for a moment, then nodded. “We have to be pressin’ on, and quickly. We cannot weather a storm in the open, and we be closer to the monastery dan we be to shelter below. A day and a half to the top, yes?”
“At our present rate, yes. We should be arriving as the storm does.”
“Send out two companies of our best, but have dem wear clothes they be exchangin’ with our Gurubashi contingent. I want them ahead and flanking us. By midnight I want them to be clearin’ any caves they find farther along. If the storm arrives fast, we gonna need shelter. Then, while the rest of us be pushing forward, I want them opening the monks’ escape tunnels and working their way up. Leave the wounded to be picked up later. Their traps only work to delay us. We have to push through quickly.
“And tonight, we gonna be having fires, not a cold camp. Big fires, two per tent.”
Her subordinate’s eyes narrowed. “Mistress, that gonna consume most of our firewood.”
“Most? Let it all go.” She pointed at the monastery. “If our people ever want to be warm again, it gonna be in the glow of the Shado-pan pyre!”
Vol’jin could not help smiling as day surrendered to dusk and long shadows pointed toward dawn. Toward the Zandalari. His group’s traps and attacks had not killed nearly as many of Khal’ak’s forces as he desired, but she had been moved to acts of desperation because of them. She’d flung two companies wide, diluting her strength, and bulled on through a number of attacks. By the time they reached the monastery, they’d be angry, frustrated, and weary—three things no general likes in his soldiers.
Given that the Zandalari had stopped for the night exactly where the defenders planned for them to stop—save the flanking battalions that had found smaller places a bit higher—Taran Zhu had been willing to call together the Thirty-three. Actually it was only thirty-one. Brother Cuo and Tyrathan had agreed to take an early watch while the elder monk called his charges to the Temple of the White Tiger.
The monks stood before him in two rows of ten and a back row of eight. Chen and Vol’jin formed the rectangle’s back two corners. Off to the sides, tables had been laden with food and a brew that Chen had put together quickly—though he maintained it was his best. Vol’jin didn’t doubt him. He’d seldom seen his friend concentrate so on a task, and his claims came with sincerity, not hyperbole.
The old monk spread his paws. “You are all too young to recall when we overthrew the mogu. Despite speculation and joking, I am too young as well. Still, I have been given access to history and memories, tales passed down from a time before this monastery existed. Tales from a time when opposing the mogu was not only a high honor but a necessity.