ALLIES AND ENEMIES
I found life among the Darkspear not so different from life on my home island, as far as I could remember. There were the usual council fires and coming-of-age rituals and seasonal ceremonies. The trolls in Sen'jin fought just as hard to gain power over their friends and foes, though their tactics were tempered some due to the demands of Thrall and his Horde. Cannibalism and troll sacrifice, for instance, had been forbidden.
While I had been cut off from other trolls for many years, the memory of tribal custom soon returned to me — it is hard to forget thousands of years of instinct — and I settled into a natural cycle of laboring for the good of the many. I hunted. I fished and helped build huts. I served on guard duty and gathered ingredients for the potions and powders made by our witchdoctors.
There was no school in Sen'jin. Our education came from handed-down stories and hands-on skills training. Like the other trolls in the village I would go to Master Gadrin's hut each day to hear his sermons on honor, retribution, voodoo, and the like. He received all with the warmth of a father. When he asked to speak with me alone, it seemed as though we were renewing an old friendship. He assured me that he was at my disposal, asked me how life with my family was, and sent me away with a small totem of Loa Aya'taa, the Fate Spinner, to watch over me.
Soon I also encountered Vol'jin, son of Sen'jin, fallen leader of the Darkspear and the one after which our village was named. I found Vol'jin on the sparring grounds to the north, where he was instructing young trolls in the ways of war. Each of the trolls had a short hunting bow carved from the horns of raptors. Tuskers of the tribe were taught to use these bows from the time they were able to lift one. It is for this reason that trolls make such deadly hunters, as we rarely miss our mark.
This was my first meeting with Vol'jin, and he scrutinized me closely, his brow heavy and his bearing authoritative and fearsome. I had heard he was a powerful practitioner of voodoo as well as a deadly predator; rumor told that he was in fact a Shadow Hunter, one of the few remaining, steeped in the darker aspects of the spirit world. He wielded a double-bladed sword similar to what the elves call a moon glaive, and many was the time I found its sharp edge at my throat — both as a young adult and later as a full-grown troll.
Where Master Gadrin had seemed like the ocean, inviting, a joy to be on with boat and oar, Vol'jin was a mountain. He was foreboding, unscalable, hard. The truth is that I did not like him from the start. Vol'jin was the one who led me and a group of tribe members on a hunting party to the biggest of the Echo Isles. Here we killed the upstart witchdoctor Zalazane, leader of the exiled trolls I had seen before, and freed his hexed slaves. The fighting was vicious and wonderful.
Among the rescued trolls was a warrior of my own age called Tashtego. Larger and fiercer in battle than any troll I had seen before, he reminds me now of a tribal brother I would have many years later named Sooja. Tashtego had been under Zalazane's control for so long that he had forgotten where he was from, but his thick accent told that he was not Darkspear.
It did not matter. Our tribe took him in, and he and I became fast friends, often sharing nightly guard watches and standing side by side as we slaughtered Kolkar centaurs in the canyons surrounding our lands. I was "Baas" to him and he was "Tego" to me, and we made a dangerous team, crude but effective, while it lasted.
* * * * *
There was one more person who would become a key link in my chain of friends (not including my sister, Hel, who would join us on some adventures but who was still rather young). I had secretly lusted for Bendi since the day I moved into the hut next to hers with my new family. To me, she was a jungle princess, brave and bold, with long black hair lathered over her shoulders in braids. We were too young to know the courting ways described in The Knot of Love, but our hot glances were enough.
On the night of the festival in honor of Loa Ezili, the goddess of beauty and ideal dreams, we lined up opposite one another, knowing each other's thoughts. The drums began, distant and slow at first, then joined by the howl of conch horns and the clang of bells. We moved in time to the rhythm, stomping and twirling. Other couples ran into each other trying to adjust to the mounting beat, but not us. The music swelled, crested, and crashed like a huge wave as we gyrated, moving closer until our faces were inches apart.
She dug her hands in to mine as the din grew louder, the dancing more frenetic. Our hands explored every curve of each other. Her tusks scraped mine countless times. I noticed it, smelled it. We guided each other's bodies to the music, eyes locked, drowning out the rest of the world. We were as one, heads close and breathing. She grinned freely. I felt her heart thumping loudly. Mine was too.
We moved slowly beyond the edge of the circle without knowing it. Or perhaps we did. A nearby hut provided all the shelter we needed. Without hesitation, she jumped at me, arms wrapping around my neck, wanting it all. Our sweaty bodies pressed together, adrenaline pumping. Our tusks met again. Her lips parted expectantly as our mouths came together.
I heard the snap of the lash before I felt its bite. I turned and in my lustful stupor it seemed the shadow of the hut we stood inside rose up and surrounded us. It took on a black form, at least ten feet tall, and there were more stinging blows from the whip-like tendrils growing out of the shape. The thing seemed to rise up over us and around us. It was too tall, fifteen then twenty feet, and we were screaming as it beat both of us, opening raw wounds on our shoulders and backs and arms.
There was no head, not really. Just two spots floating high in the air, black but also red, like the eyes of a wolf hunting under the blood moon. I knew those eyes. They belonged to Vol'jin. Only later did I find out that Bendi was his blood-kin, a distant cousin, but enough to raise the Shadow Hunter's ire at our brazenness. I do not know how we escaped his wrath. I woke up in my own bed the next day, still wearing the scars he had put there.
Two days later Bendi, Tashtego, and I ran off together to the Valley of Trials. We were young and angry, determined that we would follow our own path and prove our worth to Vol'jin and anyone else who turned their eyes down on us. We would become mighty headhunters and hexers, returning to Sen'jin when our names were feared throughout Kalimdor. But had we helped ourselves or only made matters worse?
