by Alexey Pehov
We retreated.
“It won’t work a second time; I had that spell ready since before they put the mittens on me,” Glo-Glo declared smugly.
Meanwhile the little yellow flowers completely covered the wall and the creature that had attacked us. Then they burst, and the creature fell apart into something that looked very much like dry hay. The same thing happened to the section of the wall. It simply collapsed, opening up a way through into the next corridor.
As bad luck would have it, an astounded orc walked out through the gap. The Firstborn was armed with a long spear with a broad head, which I was not glad to see. The orc spotted us and promptly got down to work.
Neither I nor Glo-Glo had any intention of letting some Hunter have our heads just like that. So we went dashing off in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for us, the orc was rather quick on the uptake, and he came dashing after us, shaking his spear. The orc spectators started baying.
I took my lead from Glo-Glo again and simply followed him. The goblin ran to an intersection and took a couple of turns, and we found ourselves in a corridor running parallel to the one where we met the orc.
“That Firstborn thinks he’s smarter than I am,” the old shaman suddenly said with a giggle.
He’d definitely flipped! What kind of time was this to gloat!
The secret of the goblin’s happy mood was revealed a few seconds later. There was the huge hole that had appeared in the wall thanks to the goblin’s shamanism; we dived through it, and were back in the corridor we’d just been forced to run out of.
“Now straight … right … straight, past four intersections … that’s it … three … four … fifth on the left…”
I was amazed that the goblin, who had only been here once, could be carrying such a precise route in his head. We came out into a fairly large round space with six passages leading off it and started dashing across.
“Third on the right!”
But we stopped short of the passage we needed, because Glo-Glo hissed: “Freeze and don’t move a muscle!”
I squinted sideways at the shaman, who had turned into a very convincing statue. What was wrong with him? Then my eyes moved from the goblin to the center of the open space, where something green had appeared out of nowhere. It looked like a cross between an immense soap bubble and a spider, except that instead of legs it had human arms—either six or eight of them. I couldn’t see any head, or eyes, or mouth. The creature just sat there with its arm-legs folded up under it, gurgling quietly.
“Harold, don’t move, and keep quiet,” said the goblin, keeping his eyes fixed on the spider. “It won’t touch us as long as we don’t move.”
“What is it?” I whispered anxiously.
The goblin decided not to favor me with an answer. Then a very smug-looking orc came dashing out into the space with his spear held at the ready. When he spotted the spider, the Hunter’s face suddenly fell and he stopped dead, too. The spider jumped to its feet (or rather, its hands), gurgled a couple of yards toward the orc, and then sat back down on the ground—it had clearly lost view of its motionless quarry.
The Firstborn glared at us furiously with his yellow eyes, and even though the situation was so dire (at least, judging from the way the orc and the goblin looked), I couldn’t resist winking at the Hunter. The orc seemed to find this gesture quite unbearably annoying, and he started growling. The spider promptly moved another two yards closer to the orc, who was forced to shut up.
Glo-Glo started muttering to himself again and then he made a sound as if he’d snapped his fingers, even though he was still wearing those idiotic mittens. The orc howled in surprise and jumped a yard into the air, as if someone had stuck a red-hot needle in his backside.
The spider leapt forward nimbly and grabbed the howling Firstborn with all eight of its arms. I didn’t see what happened after that, because I was dashing like grim death after Glo-Glo. But I don’t think the orc was to be envied. Well then, we’d got rid of one of the Hunters; that just left the other three. Eventually Glo-Glo decided that after such a long run it would be a good idea to get our breath back, and we stopped at an intersection.
“What … was … that?” I wheezed, gasping for air.
“That? It’s a monster that appeared … in the thickets of the forest after the elves and the orcs experimented with battle shamanism. That’s what the experiments produced. In principle, it’s perfectly harmless.”
“I thought you said the same about those things with four arms?”
“No, it really is harmless. The important thing is not to disturb it. A bubblebelly is just very protective of its territory and thinks everyone who enters it is an enemy. You just have to stay still and wait for it to crawl away. It doesn’t even eat anybody, just chews them up into mush and spits them out again.”
“That’s a very encouraging thought—being chewed into mush. By the way, that was a clever trick with the orc.”
For some reason Glo-Glo seemed a bit flustered by that and he muttered, “Actually, my magic was supposed to strike the bubblebelly with lightning, but thanks to the mittens, it made the orc jump.”
Mmm, yes. The gods be praised it wasn’t us who jumped!
“And by the way, what are you doing with lightning? I didn’t know goblins had any battle magic. You only have defensive shamanism.”
“Who says so?”
“Well, I thought you said—”
“We told you men that so we wouldn’t have these Orders of yours wandering around in our forest! Why should we want to share our secrets with your magicians? Shall we go?”
“Is it far now?”
“About the same distance again,” the goblin told me after a moment’s thought.
I groaned.
Left, left, right, right, straight on, left again, then right, then straight on, then back at full speed to get away from another of those skeletons with four arms. Those beasts were agile, all right, but they turned out to be pretty stupid. We ran into a dead end, waited until the creature made its final leap, and simply dropped to the ground. The creature went flying over our heads like a huge grasshopper and smashed into the wall. The wall immediately came to life, wound its branches round the green creature, and sucked it in.
“Ugh!” was all I could say at the sight of this wonder.
“Nothing surprising about that,” said Glo-Glo, dusting off his cloak. “Those things were created by the same spell as the wall, so if they touch each other, they just merge together.”
“The things you know!”
“I’m a shaman, my boy, not some marketplace charlatan! And a shaman has to know all sorts of things, otherwise his tribe won’t last very long. Come on, get those hooves moving, there’s not far left to go now.”
And we didn’t go very far, because at the next intersection we came across another Hunter. Fortunately, he was standing with his back to us and gazing off into the distance, holding an arrow ready on his bowstring. Was he lying in ambush for someone?
The Hunter was no more than seven yards away from us. No distance at all but, speaking for myself, I wasn’t too sure that if I tried to attack him, I wouldn’t end up with an arrow in me. Glo-Glo and I looked at each other, and he pointed to my sword with his eyes. I sighed and started slowly pulling the sword out of its scabbard. Fortunately for me, the orc never turned round. But then, as bad luck would have it, our chain clanked.
There was no time to think, and I flung the short, heavy weapon at the orc with all my might. And something impossible happened. Luck must have been on my side that day, because the sword turned a few somersaults in the air and buried itself in the Firstborn’s chest before he had time to shoot. It hit him so hard that he went flying backward and smashed into the wall.
“Well, may the forest spirits take me!” Glo-Glo exclaimed, shaking his head in delight. “I had no idea you could do that.”
“Neither did I,” I told the goblin, watching ruefully as the orc’s body disappeared into the thick g
reen barrier, taking my sword with it.
“Come on, Harold, only two more intersections to go and we’re there. Orcs! We’ll diddle the lot of them.” And Glo-Glo stomped on, paying no attention to where the orc’s body had disappeared and my lost sword.
“Are you sure that in the last thirty years the orcs haven’t blocked off your little passage?”
“No, but we have to hope for the best.”
Two intersections after that the goblin grabbed hold of my arm and said, “Look.”
We were facing an open space exactly like the one where we met the bubblebelly. But there weren’t any exits leading off this one, and there were three tall green columns standing in it. Two of them were just plain columns, but the third one had two arms growing out of it, and they looked very much like the jaws of a praying mantis.
“What are we in for this time?” I groaned.
“These are the pillars I told you about,” the goblin muttered. “The ones without claws are sleeping, and that one’s on guard. They’re terribly quick, but if we can slip past them, we’ll be right beside the passage.”
“But where is the passage?” I asked. The pillars didn’t seem to be taking any notice of us, and I relaxed a bit.
“There it is, look!” the goblin said, as cool as a cucumber, pointing to the other side of the open space.
I had to strain my eyes to make out the goblin’s passage.
“Are you kidding?” I roared almost at the top of my voice. “A pregnant mouse would have a hard time trying to get through there.”
“Let’s not forget that last time I got through without any problem,” the goblin replied peevishly.
“But I’m not you! I’m not climbing in there!”
“Oh yes you are!”
“Why in the name of darkness did I ever listen to you?” I groaned.
“Because there’s a very good chance that thanks to me, you might survive.” Nothing could embarrass the goblin. “Believe me, my boy, the passage is a lot bigger than it looks. All right, if we waste any more time, one of the other Hunters or some other beast will find us. Just sprint for the passage as fast as you can and don’t get in the way of that pillar’s claws.”
“What about the others?”
“The others will take half a minute to wake up. Ready?”
I gulped hard and nodded.
“Run for it!”
Before we’d covered even a quarter of the distance, the pillar started moving toward us very fast, without making a sound.
In a single heartbeat, it was already towering up over us, and it took every last drop of agility I had to avoid a descending claw. I avoided it, but the pillar immediately struck again, after swinging its arm back round in some incredible fashion. I jumped one way, Glo-Glo jumped the other, and the claw hit the chain fettering us together close to the goblin’s arm.
The chain snapped, and Glo-Glo was left with just a bracelet, while I had all the rest. Setting the Labyrinth ringing with choice obscenities, I launched into a run, winding the chain onto my arm as I tried to catch up with the goblin.
The pillar was treading on my heels, so I dived into the narrow entrance after Glo-Glo like a fish. Somewhere behind me, claws clattered on the stone slabs, and I started working desperately with arms and legs, hauling myself as far away as possible from the rather agitated pillar. Fortunately for me and the goblin, the rotten beast didn’t try to storm the wall, and gave up on us.
“Glo-Glo, may you…,” I growled at the goblin crawling along in front of me. “Go slower, I can’t keep up.”
The goblin obligingly stopped and waited for me to catch up with him.
“Well, we pulled that off neatly, eh?”
“If you ignore the fact that your pillar very nearly nailed us and your passage is narrower than the space under a tight-fisted merchant’s bed, then yes … it was very neat.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll fit through here just fine!” Glo-Glo was much too pleased with himself to take any notice of my whinging. “Only don’t lift your head up, or you’ll end up in the wall!”
He didn’t have to remind me! I already knew that one twitch to the left or the right, and I’d touch the green walls of the patch.
“How far do we have to crawl?”
The shaman didn’t risk turning his face toward me. One wrong move in this place could lead to a grotesque death. It would be like escaping from the Gray Stones, tripping over your own feet, and breaking your neck. The law of universal swinishness in action, so to speak.
“Can you manage a hundred and fifty yards?”
I ground my teeth and said, “What choice do I have? I’ll manage it. Just as long as it doesn’t get any narrower.”
“It won’t. Keep crawling.”
We crawled on. The only place I’d ever “enjoyed” myself so much was in Hrad Spein, when I crawled through that long, narrow stone tunnel. When I reckoned we’d already covered most of the distance, Glo-Glo suddenly stopped moving, stopped panting, and announced: “Er, Harold … we’ve got a little problem here.”
“What kind of problem?” I asked in a trembling voice, already imagining that the goblin had come nose to nose with some other monster of the Labyrinth.
“There’s a skeleton lying across the path.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that he’s lying right across our path,” he repeated patiently. “I might be able to crawl over him, but I doubt very much if you can.”
“Just don’t tell me we have to crawl back,” I hissed angrily.
“Absolutely not! I’ll take him apart.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bone by bone. Wait.”
I had to lie there, listening to the goblin snuffling. Eventually even my patience ran out and I hissed like a grass snake with a cold: “Well, how much longer?”
“It’s done. I hope the deceased isn’t offended with us. Right, I’ll just get the skull out of the way.… Why, you! There … that’s it. Crawl!”
I didn’t know how the goblin had managed it, but all I found on the path were a few bones pressed into the earth (there weren’t any stone slabs in the passage). Glo-Glo had fed everything else to the wall. The rest of the journey to safety passed off uneventfully, and when the shaman and I emerged from the passage, we were greeted by a roar from the stands.
We were in another round space, with a massive triangular gray stone lying in the middle of it. And standing between the slab of stone and us was the third Hunter. When he caught sight of us, he smiled and bowed (which was surprising enough in itself) and drew his yataghan.
The Firstborn was in no hurry to attack. He was clearly waiting for us to try to get through to the stone. I looked at his yataghan, and regretted the untimely loss of my sword.
“Now what do we do?” I hissed through my teeth without moving my lips. “This snake’s just dreaming of slicing you and me to ribbons.”
“I have a dagger,” said Glo-Glo, taking the Eastern trinket out from behind his belt.
“Are you counting on this lad laughing himself to death when he sees your toothpick?” I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the smiling orc.
“What if you throw the dagger at the Hunter? Like the sword.”
“Two miracles in one day would be too much. It won’t work. But how’s your magic doing?”
“Out of the question. In the mittens it could go very wrong. Better not to try.”
The orc was clearly starting to get impatient, and he beckoned to us with his finger, keeping that smile fixed on his face.
“Come on, Glo-Glo, go all the way round him,” I suggested. “He won’t get two of us at once.”
“Nonsense.”
“That way at least someone will reach the stone.”
The shaman didn’t argue, and started running round the orc in a wide circle. The Firstborn hadn’t been expecting such an original move from the monkeys and he stopped smiling and dashed to intercept the goblin.
Glo-
Glo stepped up the pace even more. I dashed toward the stone, and the orc immediately forgot about the goblin and started for me. I hurtled toward him, twirling the chain round above my head—a full yard of it.
The smart shaman did what I’d told him to do and didn’t get involved in the fight. He hopped up onto the stone and instantly disappeared.
The orc was blocking my way. I flung the chain forward, trying to hit him in the face. He dodged to one side as smoothly as if he was dancing and slashed with his yataghan. I dropped to the ground rather clumsily, rolled, and swung the chain. The warrior obviously wasn’t trying to kill me straightaway, he’d decided to entertain the crowd. Now I was between the orc and the stone, and I wasn’t about to let an opportunity like that slip. I dashed for the stone, leaving my opponent with his mouth hanging open.
Had that cretin really been expecting me to tempt fate and take on a yataghan with a pitiful length of broken chain? The Firstborn really did underestimate men far too much! Maybe we were monkeys, unworthy of living in Siala, but we certainly weren’t fools!
“Stop, you coward! Fight!” I heard him roar behind me, but it was too late, I’d already hopped up on the stone.
Bang! I was back in Leather Apron’s pen. And there was Glo-Glo, grinning. Some of the orcs were rubbing their hands in delight, and some were swearing blue murder. For an instant Olag and Fagred’s leering mugs actually looked like those of friends and family. No doubt they, their commander, and the shaman had won a whole heap of valuables, or whatever it is orcs use for wagers.
“Hold your hands out, monkeys!” Leather Apron growled. “I’ll take your chains off.”
“Congratulations, Harold!” Glo-Glo chuckled. “Now you can count yourself one of the few who’ve been through the Labyrinth and lived.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry, greeny,” Leather Apron rumbled. “We’ll see how you run tomorrow, when they close that passage off.”
I just stood there with my jaw hanging open until Olag and Fagred took me and the goblin back up the steps.
* * *
“You didn’t tell me anything about a second run in the Labyrinth!” I told Glo-Glo angrily, after we’d been sent back to our pit.