World of Warcraft: Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde (29 page)

V
ilnak’dor stared at him, his eyes as wide as if they’d been trapped behind some pilfered gnomish goggles. “You would?”

“Certainly. It would appease Warlord Kao.” Vol’jin opened his hands. “Your dress. Your styling. Clearly keeping the mogu happy be your primary concern. Killing me would help.” The Darkspear let the Zandalari’s gasped disbelief hang in the air for a moment, then continued. “It would also be a gross error. It would be costing you victory.”

“Would it?”

“Absolutely.” Vol’jin kept his voice low and as ragged as it had first been during his recovery. “The Horde believes me dead. Murdered. People know I have survived. If you be killing me and claim it, the Darkspears gonna never join. Your king’s dream of one pan-troll empire be dead. You also be setting the Horde against you. You be freeing Garrosh from internal dissent. While I live, he be fearing my telling the truth of what happened. Khal’ak knows. Rumors run rife. I be the arrow that can be shot into Garrosh’s heart when the time comes.”

“An arrow in his heart or a thorn in my side?”

“A thorn in many sides.” The shadow hunter smiled carefully. “You use me and my position to be goading the Gurubashi and
Amani to do more. You use me as a promise of advancement for the smaller tribes. Motivation through fear works, but only if hope be balancing it.”

The old Zandalari general’s eyes narrowed. “I would elevate the Darkspears as an example. That would be your price?”

“Not too steep. You would bring in the Darkspears when your king could not.”

Temptation again widened the old troll’s eyes. “But can I be trusting you?”

Khal’ak nodded. “He be motivated, my lord.”

Vol’jin bowed his head solemnly. “Not just because you hold three companions of mine. My choices be narrowed. The leader of the Horde had me murdered. There be no power there for me. The Darkspears, while loyal, be too small to stand alone against the Horde or your efforts. I knew that before I saw the mogu. The pandaren been strong enough in the past, but now? They be requiring a man and me in opposing you.”

“And yet, for you, personally, Vol’jin, what would you be wishing from dis?” Vilnak’dor spread his arms. “Would you be supplantin’ me? Would you be rising to rule the Zandalari?”

“If I desired that much power, I would rule in Orgrimmar from a throne wet with orc blood. That path, that desire, be blocked from me.” Vol’jin patted the dagger bound to his upper-left arm. “You be heir to the Zandalari heritage. Zandalari traditions be shaping you. They be defining your destiny. So I be heir to an ancient tradition. I be shadow hunter. The Zandalari were in their infancy while my tradition had matured for a long while.

“My choices be defined by the loa. The loa want what be best for their people. If Elortha no Shadra had told me that your death be best for trolls, this little dagger would already be pinning your eye to the inside of your skull.”

Vilnak’dor tried to retain his composure, but crossing his arms over his chest betrayed him. “Be that what—”

“She be sending visions, expressing displeasure, General, but not demanding I kill you.” Vol’jin pressed his hands together. “She be reminding me of my responsibility. My life, my desires, be hers to command. Trolls again dominant, a return to the older traditions, these be making her happy. Serving you serves her. If you gonna have me.”

The sincere tone of Vol’jin’s last statement gave the Zandalari pause. He smiled indulgently, his hands tugging on the loose ends of the knotted sash of gold silk. His expression contracted into one Vilnak’dor clearly considered to be reflective of sagacity and deliberation.

And yet he be doing this while dressed up like a child in mogu clothing, in a room built to mogu proportions.
With the tall windows as a backdrop, thick casement carvings, and images chiseled into the walls, the very decor diminished Vilnak’dor. Why Rastakhan would have sent him, Vol’jin could not imagine, unless it was that this general was least likely to offend the mogu. He also had to imagine that Vilnak’dor was not the only high-ranking of the Zandalari involved in the invasion.

But he be the one I have to deal with
.

“What you have said be demanding thought, Darkspear.” Vilnak’dor nodded. “Your status as shadow hunter be considerable, and your political assessment valuable. I gonna think on dese things.”

“As it be pleasing you, my lord.” Vol’jin bowed in the pandaren fashion, then withdrew behind Khal’ak. They paced through the darkened corridors, their footsteps but whispers echoed through the shadowed vaults. They remained silent until they reached the steps and stood between the stone quilen.

Vol’jin faced her with an open expression. “You be realizing we gonna have to kill him. You be right that he fears me. He be fearing a shadow hunter more.”

“Which be why he gonna be forced to have you eliminated.” She
frowned. “Nothing so clumsy as Garrosh’s attempt. He gonna want the Darkspears brought in first; then he can do away with you. A note you write before your death gonna commend him and name him, or his puppet, as your heir.”

“I agree. This be giving us time.”

“He’ll be letting you languish in prison for several days, then free you so you’ll be grateful.”

Vol’jin nodded. “Giving you time to prepare.”

Before she could say anything to that, Warlord Kao strode through the door. He still wore the cloak he’d been given but had added to it tall boots, gold silk pants, a black silk tunic, and a belt of gold. He stopped, not out of surprise but on purpose.

So he stalked us
.

“My master has promised me that I may slay as many pandaren as I desire. They are flawed creatures, and we shall make better. Then they shall be eliminated.” The mogu bared white teeth. “Including your companions, troll.”

“Your master’s wisdom deserves honoring.” Vol’jin bowed, not deeply or long, but he did bow.

The mogu snorted. “I know you, troll. Your kind. You understand only power. Watch and learn to fear my master’s power.”

Warlord Kao spread his arms wide, but not in a gesture of someone gathering power. Instead, he was a host, a master of a faire, presenting the delights his guests would enjoy inside. As his hands opened, taking in the quilen, the beasts moved. The stone didn’t crack as it had during his resurrection. That magic had been inferior, trivial stuff compared to this. The Thunder King’s power instantly transmuted gray stone into living flesh, and hollow-eyed creatures into hungry monsters.

Kao laughed. The quilen, like hounds called to the huntsman, spun on their pedestals and came to sit flanking him. “Your pandaren did not build this. With all the time they have had, they never could have built anything this elegant. The Thunder King
raised this himself, through his dreams. Now that he is returned to us, he will raise his empire again. There is no force on this world which can stop him, and no force which can deny him anything he desires.”

“Then only a fool would be opposing him.” Vol’jin bowed more respectfully. “And I be no fool.”

Once Kao withdrew, Khal’ak sighed deeply. “He be not an enemy I would have wished to cultivate.”

“My mistake.”

“A temporary misstep, which can be remedied.” She moved to Vol’jin and removed the ceremonial dagger. “I gonna convince Vilnak’dor that you are the key to success. He gonna free you. Until den . . .”

The Darkspear smiled and lifted his hands to be bound again in the golden chains. “I be troll. I can be very patient.”

Khal’ak kissed his cheek before turning him over to the guards. “Soon, Shadow Hunter, very soon.”

•  •  •

Vol’jin’s companions drew back from the cage’s door as per Zandalari command, then welcomed him once the guards had gone away. They asked him to tell them everything. He did, starting with Khal’ak’s offer to him and continuing to his conversation with the Zandalari leader and Kao’s display of power.

Cuo said nothing. Chen remained uncharacteristically quiet. The man reached up, gripping the cage’s overhead bars. “I can’t fault your reasoning.”

Vol’jin regarded him closely. “You made your decision to remain dead because, no matter how painful, it be best for your family, yes?”

“Right.”

“And you made that decision because you be looking at life as it truly be, not as you imagined it or wished it be, yes?”

Tyrathan nodded. “As I said, I can’t fault your logic.”

Vol’jin squatted, lowering his voice. “To be doing the best for family, one must be acting on the truth, not illusion. This be, this will ever be, the Zandalari problem.”

Chen crept a bit closer. “I don’t understand.”

“You should be seeing, my friend. You’ve seen firsthand. You be knowing the Darkspears. You been among us. You have seen our heart. The Zandalari, the Gurubashi, and the Amani, they be looking down on us. They be thinking we have accomplished nothing while they be raising empires and losing them. The Gurubashi be thinking they could exterminate us. They failed. They failed to be seeing the truth.

“The Darkspears have survived. We have survived because we be living in the world that is, not in the world we lament having lost. They be measuring everything against a standard that be imagined. They do not know what the past empires were like, not truly. They only be knowing the romantic fantasy of those empires. Their standards be unrealistic, not only because they be based on lies but also because those standards have no place in the world of today.”

Seeing Vilnak’dor in mogu clothing, dwarfed by mogu architecture, had crystallized in Vol’jin’s mind a thought that had haunted him through dream and vision. If one looked at the whole history of trolls, it could only be seen as a descent from heights. The trolls had once been unified, but since those days, their society had fractured, and then the shards had tried to re-create the imagined glory of the whole. Not only was that impossible, but to make it happen, they preyed upon each other. Even now the Zandalari collected a unity of trolls less to re-form what trolls once had been than to confirm their place at the apex of troll civilization. Each shard, in its drive to shape an empire and dominate the world, did so to prove it was the best.

But all they do confirms they don’t believe they be the best
.

Vol’jin’s father, Sen’jin, had never seen it that way. He’d wanted what was best for the Darkspears. That was for them to be given a
home free from fear, where they could see to their wants and needs without stress. For those obsessed with power, the past, and dreams of empire, this seemed a very tiny ambition.

And yet, that ambition be the only seed for empires
. Tyrathan had framed it in terms of his wife’s fears that all he knew how to do was to kill and destroy. Vol’jin felt she underestimated him, but her assessment certainly applied to the Zandalari and the mogu. A need for revenge drove them, but once they had destroyed all their enemies, what then? Would they be driven to create an idyllic society, or just to find new enemies?

Tyrathan was ready to sacrifice himself for family. Chen would do it in a heartbeat for Li Li and Yalia. Cuo and the Shado-pan would do it for Pandaria. Vol’jin’s father had, and Vol’jin himself would.
But who be my family?

When King Rastakhan’s agent, Zul, had tried to gather all the trolls together, Vol’jin had withdrawn and told him that “the Horde be my family.” Garrosh’s attempt to kill him seemed to put the lie to that statement, but then Vol’jin realized that this act was not in furtherance of the Horde’s goals. The murder had been to further Garrosh’s goals. That he could murder Vol’jin marked the point of divergence between what the orc wanted and what was good for the Horde.

The Horde be my family. It be my duty to give everything for my family
. Vol’jin nodded. Just sitting back in Pandaria, licking his wounds, was letting the Horde suffer. To do that was a betrayal of his family and his responsibilities.

As a troll and as a shadow hunter
.

He’d not lied when he told Vilnak’dor that his duty as a shadow hunter was to do what was best for trolls. Joining a bloody effort to attempt to reestablish centuries-old empires was not best for trolls. This was not because it would cost lives; it was because the project had nothing to do with the realities of the world. The Horde was his family. The Darkspears were part of the Horde. The Horde was
part of the current reality. The fates of the Horde and of trolls were undeniably tangled together. To act as if that wasn’t the truth would be complete folly.

Vol’jin took hold of the golden chain between his hands. “The past be important. We can and must be learning from it, but it cannot shackle us. Ancient empires built by legions would be vanishing if up against a single company of goblin cannoneers. The old ways be valuable, but only as a foundation for the future we choose to be building.”

The troll pointed a finger at Tyrathan. “It be like you, my friend. You be good at killing. But you can learn to be good at building—though, I gonna admit, killing be of more use right now. And you, Chen, you desiring a home and family, that be very powerful. Many a warrior has died opposing a fighter who seeks to defend just that. And you, Cuo, and the Shado-pan with your desiring balance. You be the water that lets the ship sail, and the anchor that stops it going too far.”

Tyrathan looked at him. “I know you value my skill at killing, but I’m not using it in the employ of the Zandalari.”

“I be hoping, my friend, you would be using it in my employ.” With a simple twist of his wrist, Vol’jin wrenched apart the soft gold link centering the chain. “They built this prison to hold Zandalari. I be more. I be Darkspear. I be shadow hunter. Time we be informing them just how bad a mistake they’ve made.”