The troll squatted and bowed his head. “Your monks’ skills still apply.”
“They do. You shall have resources. Not enough to win your war, but enough to dull their war.” Taran Zhu exhaled slowly as he opened his eyes. “I will give you eighteen monks. They will not be the biggest or fastest, but they will be those best able to accomplish your ends.”
Tyrathan’s open-mouthed expression revealed his heart. “Eighteen monks and the three of us.” He looked at Vol’jin. “In your vision, the fleet, that’s, what, two ships apiece?”
“Three. One be small.”
“That’s not going to dull the invasion; it will just knock some rust off it.” The man shook his head. “We have to have more.”
“I would give you more were I able.” The Shado-pan leader opened empty paws. “Alas, only twenty-one of you can reach Zouchin in enough time to be any help at all.”
Vol’jin had expected that girding himself for war might be familiar enough a ritual that it would reforge a link with his past. Pandaren armor, however, frustrated him. Too short and too large at the same time, the quilted silk felt too light to be effective. The strip scale metal—all bound together with bright cords, along with a lacquered leather breastplate—flopped in places it shouldn’t and made him round in places he shouldn’t have been. A monk worked quickly to extend the armor skirting from the breastplate, and Vol’jin vowed that the first thing he’d do was strip the armor off a Zandalari and use that.
Then he laughed. He was too tall for pandaren armor but too short for Zandalari. He’d dealt with them before. They stood at least a head taller than he did, and twice that if one measured arrogance. Though he disliked the way they viewed all other trolls as their inferiors, he could not deny that their clean limbs and ennobled features made them pleasing to look upon. He’d once heard that they’d been referred to—by a man—as the “elves of trolls.” The Zandalari had found that a great insult, and their discomfort amused him.
While he was fitted for his armor, much banging and clanging heralded the preparations for battle. Chen proudly presented him with a dual-bladed sword. “I had the swordsmiths knock the grips off two of the curved swords, then rivet the tangs together and wrap them in shark’s skin over bamboo. It’s not quite your glaive, but it’s scary-looking.”
“Scarier yet when it drinks Zandalari blood.” Vol’jin took the blade by the central grip and twirled it around. He snapped the weapon so it was still, but the blades quivered and hummed curiously. Though it wasn’t his glaive, the balance matched favorably. “You be possessing more skills than just brewing.”
“No. Brother Xiao was one of those who drank with us.” Chen smiled. “I told him to make a weapon that was what you remembered from the brew.”
“He has done well.”
Tyrathan gave a low whistle as he entered the hallway. He wore a long leather surcoat with metal plates riveted onto it. His helmet came to a point and had a mail skirt to protect his neck. He carried two bows and a half dozen quivers of arrows. “Nice glaive. It’ll get lots of work.”
The man tossed Vol’jin a bow. “These are the best out of their armory. I scoured it and have the best of their arrows too. All field points—the combat arrows have been sent to monks elsewhere. These’ll fly true but won’t punch through armor.”
Vol’jin nodded. “You be needing careful shooting, then.”
“With trolls, I draw a line connecting the bottom of the ears, drop it three inches, and split it in half. Easy shot at the spine, and you get the tongue as you’re going.”
Chen looked aghast. “I think, Vol’jin, what he meant—”
“I be knowing what he meant.” The troll looked at Tyrathan. “These be Zandalari. Four inches. Their ears be set high.”
Chen and Tyrathan followed Vol’jin into the monastery courtyard. The monks who were part of the force most closely resembled the man in attire, save that each of them had the monastery’s tiger crest emblazoned on chest and back. They had a single strip of cloth—half of them red, half of them blue—dangling from their helmet’s point. Taran Zhu had not lied. These were not the monks Vol’jin would have chosen, but he accepted that the master monk knew his people best. It did surprise Vol’jin to see Yalia Sagewhisper among the eighteen, but then he recalled that they were going to defend her home and that her knowledge of the surrounding area would be invaluable.
Vol’jin also realized, as he came up the steps to the plane between monastery and mountain, why Taran Zhu could only send so limited a force. Eleven flying beasts, sinuous and languid, had been hitched up with double saddles and laden with some meager supplies in leather satchels. He’d seen smaller versions of the beasts carved into walls or as statues in niches throughout the monastery. He’d somehow assumed they were a pandaren artistic representation of dragons.
Yalia beckoned them forward and pointed each monk to a beast. “These are cloud serpents. In days past, they were feared, before a brave young woman befriended them. She taught us what they could do. They are not common these days. The monastery has access to a flock.”
Vol’jin glanced back at the monastery and caught sight of Taran Zhu at a balcony. The monk gave no sign of noticing Vol’jin, but that did not fool the troll. Though Taran Zhu professed ignorance of the ways of war, he understood well enough that information was power and that access to information had to be limited by necessity. Vol’jin should have been told immediately of the cloud serpents but hadn’t been.
I been told nothing that would benefit the Zandalari were they to capture me.
Irritation flashed through the troll; then he caught himself. He was going to war, but it was not his war. The Zandalari were invading Pandaria, not the Echo Isles. And yet, if it be not my war, why be I going off to fight it? That Chen may have a brewery on the north coast? Or to frustrate the Zandalari?
A thought echoed up through his mind, coming in a deep, distant voice. Bwonsamdi’s voice. Coming up from the void. Or be it to prove that Vol’jin be not dead?
Vol’jin had no answer, so he formulated one as he slid into the saddle behind a monk. I go to war, Bwonsamdi, to be giving you guests to welcome to eternity. You may be believing you no longer know me, but I be knowing you. It be time you are reminded of that fact.
At a sign from the monk acting as flight master, the cloud serpents slithered toward the edge of the mountain and hurled themselves from the heights. The beasts plunged toward the earth below. Vol’jin, who wore no helmet since nothing at the monastery had fit, felt the air tug at his red hair, and he howled exultantly.
Then the cold mountain wind flooded his lungs and reawakened the aching in his throat. He coughed and felt a sympathetic stitch tug at his side. The troll snarled, breathing in through his nose, resenting the pains from his last fight.
The cloud serpents coiled and sprang into flight. Their scaled bodies twisted and danced, playful and gleeful. Vol’jin might have taken pleasure in that another time, but the contrast of their flight with the grim nature of his mission knotted his stomach. What they were racing to prevent was the antithesis of pleasure, and he wasn’t at all certain they would make it before disaster unfolded.
They arrived in the mountains near Zouchin just in the nick of time. Vol’jin wished they had been much faster or more greatly delayed. Five ships had already entered the harbor. Out on the ocean a fishing boat was merrily burning to the waterline. Siege machines—although the smaller kind suitable to ships—hurled stones to bounce through the village. Their tumbling runs splintered houses and yet, somehow, left no crushed bodies in their wake.