Vol’jin interposed himself between her and the monk. “I be knowing better than to offer you mercy.”
Her eyes blazed. “You be betraying your betters.”
“Shadow hunters have no betters.”
Khal’ak attacked, as skillfully as the troll he’d just killed and perhaps a bit quicker. Her blade flashed through serpentine twists and cuts. He didn’t block many blows, just parried them or twisted aside. She gave him no openings to attack, but it would not have mattered if she had. His muscles already burned with fatigue. He wasn’t certain he’d be fast enough to get past her guard. And she seemed to be waiting for something, having had the benefit of watching him fight.
What has she seen?
As if she’d read his mind, Khal’ak pressed him. She slashed high and low, circling to the right, to his strong side. She might have noticed his favoring of his left shoulder, but he’d recovered from that damage. If it wasn’t that, what was she seeking to exploit?
Then he realized that it didn’t matter what she had seen, because he knew what she had not seen. As she slashed at him with a cut aimed at his belly, he shifted his weapon to his left hand. He didn’t turn the cut with his glaive; he just slowed it and stepped forward. Her sword still caught him over the hip, right where Deng-Tai had hit him with the spear haft. He felt the pain, but it seemed incredibly far away.
His left arm came down, trapping her wrist against his side. She looked up, fury in her eyes threatening to arc out and burn him. He met it with contempt, not because she was an enemy, but because she was the corruption that would destroy Pandaria and all trolls. He held her gaze for just long enough that he could believe she understood, and then he killed her.
Quickly.
Remorselessly.
Every time she’d seen him fight, he’d used a glaive and fought in a traditional manner. The only thing she hadn’t seen and didn’t know about was the training he’d had at the paws of the Shado-pan. Fitting I kill her with my bare hands.
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.