by Alexey Pehov
“We shall take note of your information. Is that all?”
“Yes. There is no more news, good-bye.”
The dragoatfly hummed as it rose up into the air and flew off toward the forest with its belly touching the tops of the daisies. The little beast was well loaded, and I was surprised it could get off the ground at all carrying that weight.
“Flinnies are very fond of all sorts of rings,” Kli-Kli enlightened me.
“I’ll remember that.”
“Rotten skunk!” Hallas exclaimed, watching with anger in his eyes as the flinny flew away.
“What can you expect from a flinny?” Kli-Kli asked with mock surprise. “They earn their living by peddling the news.”
“So won’t he sell us to that group of orcs? I think the Firstborn could find something to pay for information on our whereabouts. I don’t trust those little runts.”
“He would do that, if the Firstborn would bother to talk to him. But they have no respect for flinnies, and the flinnies are too proud to put up with that kind of treatment.”
“Pack up your things!” said Egrassa, getting up off the ground. “We have the whole day until it gets dark, and then the night in reserve. We have to cover as much distance as possible today.”
“What are we going to do about the orcs?”
This was no idle question from Mumr—there were Firstborn up ahead, even if they weren’t expecting us.
“We’ll kill them,” said Egrassa, glancing at Miralissa, who nodded. “We could just avoid them, of course, but it’s never a good idea to leave enemies behind you.”
“And what do we do about this fellow who’s coming up behind us? Why don’t Deler and I stay behind and ask him a few questions?”
“Hallas, you have no brains and no imagination!” said Deler—the dwarf never pulled any punches talking to his partner. “All you ever want to do is to wave that mattock about. The flinny told us this fellow is dangerous and we should stay well clear of him! And even if we beat him, then how are we going to find the group afterward, have you thought about that? Or since this morning have gnomes learned how to wander through forests without getting lost?”
“It’s no more difficult than walking through the mine galleries,” Hallas muttered.
“But I don’t want to get lost in the forest and then one fine day discover that I’ve wandered into an orcs’ nest,” Deler snapped.
“No one’s staying here,” said Milord Alistan, putting a swift end to the argument between the gnome and the dwarf. “If that man wants to follow us, let him. If he catches up and attacks us, then we’ll fight him. I’m more concerned about Pargaid and his dogs waiting for us up ahead, and this Spinney.”
“We’ll deal with Pargaid when we reach him, milord,” said Eel, who had already packed his sack.
“There’s no reason to be so concerned about the Spinney, either,” said Miralissa, throwing her s’kash behind her shoulder. “The forest spirits could have left it for a hundred different reasons. We’ll hope for the best.”
“And expect the worst,” I muttered quietly, but I think the elfess heard me anyway.
“Kli-Kli.” The dwarf’s voice was very soft, but it sounded rather ominous for the goblin. “What did you do with my hat?”
The goblin decided the best thing to do was hide behind my back. That’s always the way—he plays his pranks and Harold’s left holding the baby.
2
THE RED SPINNEY
“What used to be here before, Kli-Kli?”
“Can’t you see for yourself, from the ruins? A city, of course!”
The goblin and I were lying on a heap of gray stones with a thick covering of moss. Standing beside us was a tall fluted column of the same stone, also overgrown with dark, dense moss, like the entire city of Chu.
The ruins of the ancient city stood in between the trunks of golden-leafs and larches. A column here, a wall there, a little farther off an arch beside some wolfberry bushes, and beyond that, a huge building with a dome that had collapsed. And so on in the same way for as far as the eye could see. The ruins rose straight out of the soft carpet of moss, they were drowning in it, choking in the undergrowth of ferns and thistles, crushed beneath the roots of the mighty golden-leafs. This city had probably been great and beautiful once, and now there was nothing left of its past glory but phantoms. Now it was nothing more than dead stone, eaten away by the hungry moths of time.
“I can see it wasn’t a country village. Who used to live here?”
“How should I know?” the jester asked with a shrug. “These ruins can remember the retreat of the ogres into the Desolate Lands and the arrival of orcs and elves in Siala. There’s no way I could know who lived here in those days. But believe me, Chu is very beautiful. Or it was very beautiful.”
“Have you been here before, too?”
“Of course not. It’s just that Chu isn’t the only abandoned city in Zagraba. There’s another one, a lot like this, near the area where my tribe lives. We used to call it Bu. It’s a lot better preserved than Chu.”
The evening was drawing in as the sun sank behind the horizon, and only a few of its bright rays could penetrate the branches of the trees. Twilight was advancing in the forest. I moved my miniature crossbow closer and checked for the hundredth time that it was loaded.
To my great joy and Kli-Kli’s intense annoyance, Alistan Markauz had left us here while the others went to deal with the orcs.
Well, it was the right thing to do! A thief and a jester aren’t made for waging war and doing battle. The goblin, of course, thought differently, but after grumbling for a while he had finally decided to stay with me.
Cra-a-a! Cra-a-a! Cur-a-a-a!
The bird’s call soared above the ruins like a mournful ghost, echoing off walls and shattering the peace of this deserted spot. For a brief instant the top of the tall skewed column and the trunks of the trees glinted with the blue flash of a spell worked about two hundred yards away. Then the usual calm of the dead city returned.
“It’s started,” said Kli-Kli, sitting up. “That’s Miralissa at work.”
“I can’t hear anything.”
“So much the better. It means no one else can hear anything, either. Let’s wait.”
So we waited. The minutes seemed to drag on for an eternity.
The thick carpet of moss deadened our footsteps, and we first saw the runner when he was just ten yards away. Kli-Kli pinched me very painfully on the arm and nodded toward the column. At first I thought the runner was Egrassa. But then why was the elf holding a yataghan instead of his usual s’kash?
Of course, it wasn’t an elf, but an orc. The two races were too much alike for me to be able to tell the difference in the first few seconds. Sagot be praised, at least we were lying behind the stones and the orc couldn’t see us.
“What are you waiting for? He’ll get away!” Kli-Kli hissed, taking the first pair of throwing knives off his belt.
The fool was right. If the orc managed to get away alive, he would warn his tribe, and we would pay with our heads. The enemy was so close to me I would have had to try really hard to miss.
Twang!
The bolt easily pierced the light chain mail and stuck in the orc’s back. He stumbled and fell facedown in the moss. I didn’t feel any pangs of conscience about shooting a running enemy from behind. If he’d had a chance, he wouldn’t have thought twice about trying to finish off me and Kli-Kli.
“Did you kill him?” Kli-Kli asked, pressing himself against me in fright.
“Looks like I did,” I said uncertainly, keeping the crossbow out for the time being.
“That’s just the point—it looks like you did. Maybe he’s got enough wits to play dead!” said the goblin, also in no great hurry to go near the body.
“Kli-Kli, he’s got a bolt stuck in his back almost right up to the flight. How could he possibly be alive?”
“I still wouldn’t go anywhere near him,” the jester warned me.
Fear and doubt are always infectious. I started watching the motionless orc apprehensively. What if the goblin was right and the Firstborn was only pretending to be a corpse? In any case, he was still clutching the yataghan in his hand.
“All right,” I sighed. “Just remember, I’m only doing this for your peace of mind.”
I had to walk a few steps closer to the body to put another bolt in the orc’s back. But the lad didn’t even twitch in response to this act of sadism.
“Well, now are you convinced he’s as dead as stone?”
“Almost.” The jester walked cautiously up to the body and prodded the dead orc with the toe of his boot. “The gods be praised, you finished him.”
“They’re not so very frightening, and they die just like men.”
“If you take them by surprise.”
I swung round sharply at the sound of Egrassa’s voice and raised the crossbow.
“Harold, if it had been an orc in my place, you’d be dead already. And anyway, your crossbow’s not loaded. What happened here?”
“An orc, one of the Firstborn you were supposed to kill. Harold shot him, but I spotted him first,” Kli-Kli babbled, determined not to let me take the credit for his victory.
“No, Kli-Kli, he’s not one of ours.” The elf tugged the body onto its back and leaned down over the orc, studying his face dispassionately. “Miralissa bound them with the Net of Immobility and we finished them all off, they never even saw it coming. Four sitting round a campfire, another one nearby with the wounded soldier, six altogether. We killed them all.”
“Then where did this one come from? Or is this orc just the product of my morbid imagination?” the goblin muttered peevishly.
“It’s just that your lousy flinny didn’t bother to tell us about the seventh one,” said Hallas, appearing from behind a wall. “From the very beginning I said we shouldn’t trust that little flying bastard.”
“Where there was a seventh, there could be an eighth,” Egrassa said thoughtfully.
“Or even a ninth and a tenth,” said the goblin, deliberately rubbing salt into the wound.
“Let’s go and join the others, then decide what to do.”
We set off after the elf, with Hallas panting along behind us. Egrassa confidently led us through the labyrinth of overgrown buildings. There was ruin and decay on all sides, but at the same time the place was … well, beautiful. With the strange, mysterious beauty of thousands of years of time.
Columns soaring up to the height of the golden-leafs or lying on the ground, broken and overgrown with moss. A statue on a pediment, so ancient that it was impossible to tell who you were looking at—a man, an orc, or someone else who lived in Siala before the start of the Gray Age.
The four orcs lying beside the fire that was barely glowing had more arrows than necessary sticking out of them. Miralissa and Egrassa had really made sure of things. There were two more bodies lying a little distance away, under an old larch tree.
Egrassa told Milord Alistan briefly about the orc I had killed.
“The flinny might not have seen the Firstborn if he was in some secret hiding place,” said Miralissa, fingering the sleeve of her dark green jacket thoughtfully.
“He just didn’t want to see, milady,” said Hallas, still unable to forget the dance he had performed for the little news peddler.
“Hallas, Deler, Mumr, Eel! Divide up into pairs and find where that seventh orc was hiding,” said Alistan Markauz.
Eel nodded for them all, and the Wild Hearts disappeared into the ruins.
“It will be completely dark in an hour,” said Milord Alistan, narrowing his eyes and looking up at the sky. “Shall we stay here or carry on?”
“That depends on what our soldiers find,” Miralissa replied wearily, “but I’m in favor of moving on. There’s a full moon now, and plenty of light; we can easily walk until the morning and rest—and then we’ll be at Hrad Spein.”
“I don’t think we should stay here, either, cousin. We can rest once we get past the Red Spinney.”
“Harold, let’s take a look at the bodies,” Kli-Kli called to me.
“I’m not interested in corpses.”
“Well, you should be.”
While the goblin wandered around, looking at the bodies, I loaded up the crossbow with two new bolts.
“Skillfully done, Lady Miralissa. In the finest traditions of the Green Platoon! I definitely approve,” Kli-Kli told the elfess when he came back.
“Well, if even you approve of my work…” She laughed.
“No, I’m serious. We cast the Net of Immobility, then we have five seconds to stick arrows into them. I think that even when the net broke the last two had no idea what was going on and they were easily killed. Who finished off the wounded one?”
“Deler,” replied Alistan Markauz. “So how do you know about the methods of the elves’ commando groups?”
“I’m a polyglot in general,” Kli-Kli answered irrelevantly.
“Well, you can command your pooglits later,” said Deler, who had only heard the fool’s final words. “We have to get going, Milord Alistan. We missed one.”
“He got away. There were two of them. Over that way there’s something like a well shaft. That’s where they were hiding. One was unfortunate enough to run into Harold, the other made off to the southwest. Unharmed, milord. I tried to overtake him, but the moss doesn’t really hold tracks,” Eel said with a grim expression. “And anyway, I’m no tracker. The man we need here is Tomcat, may he dwell in the light.…”
“What were they doing in the well?” Alistan Markauz asked, and Mumr held out a scrap of cloth to him without saying a word.
“A man?”
“Yes, milord, he’s dead, and his face is cut to ribbons, but I recognized him from his clothes,” Lamplighter said with a nod. “He was with Balistan Pargaid’s men at the duel.”
“Are you planning to hide from them in the Palaces of Bone, milady?”
“That won’t be necessary. In the first place, they’re no fools. Since the evil awoke on the lower levels of the burial chambers, they don’t come within a league of that place. Nothing, not even the presence of elves, would make the orcs do something as stupid as approaching the Eastern Gates of the Palaces of Bone.”
“Then we won’t delay,” said Markauz, nodding to Egrassa for him to go on ahead and show us the way.
Our group walked on into the night.
In the forest at night, darkness comes quickly and yet somehow imperceptibly. The faint, narrow path ran out from under your feet, and then the night hid it completely.
The trees, branches, and bushes dissolved into the all-enveloping blanket of darkness, leaving nothing but memories (there was a pine tree there, and there was an old maple growing there, in that patch of inky blackness) and you had to raise your eyes to the sky in order to see the silhouettes of the interwoven branches that fenced off the stars sprinkled across the heavens.
For a few long, exhausting moments, you staggered along, straining so hard to see in the pitch blackness that your eyes hurt. And then the full moon came rolling reluctantly out from behind the dark veil of night.
It looked like a thick, dark yellow disk of Isilina cheese and, just like the cheese, its broad surface was covered with holes and wrinkles. The moon brought light into the world and gave it to the night below, and the beams of the moon’s gift flooded the sleeping forest, playing over the branches and trunks of the dreaming golden-leafs, creating the moon-mother’s reflection in a slowly murmuring stream, dancing on the fields of night mist rising from the moss in white wisps and reaching upward into the air. The moonlight made the forest as beautiful and magical as a fairy tale. And the moon transformed the ruins of the ancient city of Chu.
Falling on the faces of nameless idols, gnawed away by the teeth of time, the moonlight made them look alive, firing our imaginations.
Oo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo! The hoot of an owl, or some other bird, spread in thick ripples through the
beams of moonlight, echoing off the larches and golden-leafs and the walls of the dead buildings.
The whole world and the whole of Zagraba breathed gently, snared by the silver threads streaming from the spindle of the full moon. It was as light as day, and only the stars were displeased by the moon’s awakening. They all dimmed their light and crept farther away from the earth to avoid falling under the spell of the radiant lamp of night.
The group was walking briskly, and the idols of the city of Chu, who had watched us go with reproachful eyes, had been left far behind. The track wound this way and that, appearing and disappearing in the thickets of bushes. And after another hour, it disappeared completely, and we had to force our way through close-growing young fir trees.
The shaggy, prickly arms lashed at us, and we had to protect our faces with our hands and double over. While I was scrambling through these prickly, unwelcoming thickets I cursed the entire world. Mumr, who was walking in front of me now, swore viciously when Eel let go of a branch too quickly, and the fir tree’s hand slapped him across the face. I don’t think I was the only one who sighed in relief when the path reappeared among the fir trees. It ran downhill now, and the firs were soon replaced by deciduous forest. We tramped across low hills overgrown with maples and bushes of blossoming redbrow. In the sunlight the small red flowers on the bushes probably looked like drops of blood, but now, like the rest of the forest, they were painted silver by the moon.
We walked along the edge of a lake with the moon and stars reflected in its black water, climbed yet another hill and walked down again, jumping across a small stream hurrying about its urgent business. There was a lot more redbrow here than beside the lake. It was growing everywhere I looked, squeezing out the other bushes and even the trees.
“Look, there’s one left at least,” Kli-Kli muttered behind my back.
“What are you talking about?” I asked him.
“Look, over there, there’s a forest spirit among the branches. Do you see the little eyes glowing? The flinny said they’d all left the Red Spinney.”