Taran Zhu slowly shook his head. “We are already embroiled, and they have not proved to be without value. Alliance and Horde have helped us deal with the sha in the Townlong Steppes. You know how great an evil they are, and how thinly spread are we. As has been long said, the enemy of my enemy is my friend—no matter the havoc they might wreak—and the sha have ever been the enemy of Pandaria.”
Chen almost chimed in with, “If you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas,” but he refrained. Not that it wasn’t on point, but it wasn’t terribly helpful, especially when so many pandaren thought of wanderers like Li Li and himself as wild dogs. He hoped Yalia didn’t see him that way, and wasn’t about to introduce the concept.
Chen lowered his head just a bit. “I am not certain, Lord, that you can ever get the two of them—my ships or the Horde and Alliance—to work together permanently, no matter how unfriendly the mutual enemy might be.”
Taran Zhu chuckled, almost silently, definitely without echo and with nothing more than a ghost of a smile. “That is not my purpose for keeping your ships in harbor, Chen. It is so that by being here, troll and man can learn from us, and as they learn from us, so we can learn from them. For as you wisely suggest, when there is no more enemy to unite them, they will once again be at each other’s throats, and then we will have to choose whom we will befriend.”
4
Vol’jin of the Darkspear trolls chose not to move. He did this because he found making that choice preferable to acknowledging that he felt too weak to move. Though the hands dealing with him were gentle, their touch respectful, he could not have thrown them off were it his greatest desire.
Unseen aides plumped pillows, then thrust them behind him to prop him up. He would have protested, but the pain in his throat made anything more than harshly growled words—and very short words—impossible. The obvious choice—“stop”—no matter how sharply barked, would have mocked his inability to stop them. Though he accepted his silence as a concession to vanity, he found the roots of his discomfort running deeper.
The soft bed and softer pillows were not comforts in which trolls luxuriated. A thin sleeping mat over a wooden floor was the height of opulence in the Echo Isles. Many trolls slept on stretches of ground, occasionally seeking shelter if a storm blew in. Yielding sand made for a better bed than the hard stone of Durotar, but trolls were not given to complaining about harsh accommodations.
The insistence on softness and comfort irritated him because it emphasized his weakness. The thinking part of him couldn’t deny that a soft bed made shifting his wounded body much easier. He doubtless slept a bit better. But in calling attention to his weakness, it somehow denied the nature of his being a troll. Trolls were to hardship and harsh reality what sharks were to the open ocean.
To remove me from that be killing me.
The clunk of a chair or stool at his right surprised him. He’d not heard whoever carried it approach. Vol’jin sniffed, and the maddening scent underlying everything came back with the force of a punch. Pandaren. Not just pandaren, but one in particular.
Chen Stormstout’s voice, low but warm, came to him in a whisper. “I would have been to see you before, but Lord Taran Zhu did not think it wise.”
Vol’jin struggled to reply. He had a million things he wished to say, but few came wrapped in words his throat was willing to utter. “Friend. Chen.” Somehow Chen came more easily, being softer.
“No playing blindfold guessing games with you. You’re too good.” Robes rustled. “If you would close your eyes, I’ll remove the bandages. The healers say your eyes were not hurt, but they did not want you overly alarmed.”
Vol’jin nodded, knowing Chen was half right. Had he a foreigner brought to him in the Echo Isles, he’d also have blindfolded him until he decided whether the captive could be trusted. Doubtless that was Taran Zhu’s reasoning, and for some further reason, he had decided that Vol’jin could be trusted.
Chen’s doing, I be suspecting.
The pandaren carefully unwound the bandages. “I have my paw over your eyes. Open them, and I will slowly draw it away.”
Vol’jin did as commanded, voicing a grunt meant to be a signal. Chen apparently took it as such, for he pulled back his paw. The troll’s eyes watered in the bright light; then Chen’s image swam into focus. The pandaren was much as Vol’jin remembered—stoutly built with a jovial sense about him, and an intelligence in his golden eyes. He was a very welcome sight.
Then Vol’jin looked down at his own body and almost closed his eyes again. Sheets covered him to the waist, and bandages covered almost the rest of him. He noted that he did have both hands and all fingers. The long lumps beneath the sheets told him his lower extremities were likewise intact. He could feel bandages constricting around his throat, and itching suggested that at least a portion of one ear had been sewed back into place.
He stared at his right hand and willed the fingers to move. They did, to his eye, but the sense of their moving took time to reach him. They seemed impossibly far away, but unlike when he’d first wakened, he could actually feel them. It be progress.
Chen smiled. “I know there are many things you want to know. Shall I start at the beginning or the end? The middle would not be so good a place, but I could start there. But that would make the middle the beginning, wouldn’t it?”
Chen’s voice rose with his explanation and its flight into folly. Other pandaren turned away, their interest in the conversation waning with their anticipation of tedium. In noticing them, Vol’jin also noticed the dark, ancient stone walls. As he had seen elsewhere in Pandaria, the place reeked of age, and yet, here, of strength as well.
Vol’jin wanted to say “beginning,” but his throat refused. “Not end.”
Chen looked back and apparently noted that the other pandaren had chosen to ignore them. “The beginning, then. I fished you out of a small watercourse far from here, at Binan Village. We did for you there what we could. You were not dying, but you were not healing either. Seems there was poison on the knife that did your throat. I brought you here, to the Shado-pan Monastery, at Kun-Lai Summit. If anyone could help you, the monks could.”
He took a moment and surveyed Vol’jin’s wounds, shaking his head. The troll noticed no pity in his assessment, and this pleased him. Chen had ever been sensible when he wasn’t clowning, and Vol’jin knew Chen cast himself as a clown so others would forever underestimate how clever he truly could be.
“I cannot imagine it was Alliance troops who did this to you.”
Vol’jin’s eyes tightened. “My. Head. Gone.”
The pandaren gave a short laugh. “Someone would be supping with the king in Stormwind, with your head the centerpiece, no doubt. But I figured you’d never let the Alliance catch you where they could hurt you so much.”
“Horde.” Vol’jin’s stomach tightened. It wasn’t really the Horde; it was Garrosh. Vol’jin’s throat constricted before he could speak the name. The bitterness of the attempt lingered on his tongue regardless.
Chen sat back and scratched at his chin. “That’s why I brought you here. There wasn’t any other choice for your care anyway, but your safekeeping…” The brewmaster sat forward, lowering his voice. “Garrosh leads the Horde now that Thrall is away, yes? He’s eliminating his rivals.”
Vol’jin let himself sink back on the pillows. “Not. Without. Reason.”
Chen chuckled, and try as he might, Vol’jin could detect no hint of reproof. “There’s not an Alliance head that’s touched a pillow that’s not had a nightmare of meeting you. Not surprising the same is true of a few in the Horde.”