Shadow Blizzard

by Alexey Pehov

  “What’s the matter, Harold?” Lamplighter asked with a frown. “Since when have you been afraid of corpses?”

  Ever since I took a stroll through Hrad Spein! I thought to myself, but I wisely said nothing. I just didn’t understand why we had to barge straight in and walk over the dead bodies when there was a perfectly open patch of ground if we just kept a bit farther to the left.

  Egrassa seemed to think the same as I did, because he turned off the road, and when we approached the battlefield we left most of the dead on our right, but what we did see was more than enough.

  The elf was right. As far as I could tell, the orcs really were young. Very young. Mere boys, in fact. And they had met their death attempting to repeat the great feat of their ancestors.

  “Boys…,” Kli-Kli whispered. “It’s strange, Harold. They’re our enemies, our bitter enemies. They hate everyone who’s different from them, but now I feel sorry for them.”

  “You’re right, jester. Children shouldn’t be fighting where real warriors should take up the sword. What made them do it? Why make this stupid attack? They knew they had no chance of victory,” said Eel, trying not to look at the faces of the dead.

  “Maybe they were surrounded and forced to give battle?” I suggested.

  “The signs tell a different story. No one surrounded them, and anyway, Zagraba’s not far away. They could have broken out of encirclement.”

  “I wonder when this battle took place?”

  “Slaughter, Harold, not battle,” Egrassa corrected me. “This is a field of slaughter, not a battlefield. The foolish young pups weren’t given a chance. Can you sense it, Kli-Kli?”

  “Yes.”

  “What in the name of darkness are you talking about?”

  “Magic, Hallas. Magic was used here.”

  “I’m not blind, goblin. The gods be praised, I still have one eye left! Just look at how battered the castle is!”

  “Men did that.”

  “What?” Lamplighter and I asked in a single voice.

  “There was no shamanism here. Only wizardry. And that means it was the work of men or light elves. And, as you realize, the latter is not very likely.”

  “Then why did they damage their own castle, smart aleck?”

  “That was the backlash, Hallas, the price paid for using wizardry. They used one of the Order’s most powerful spells here. I assume that some abomination descended on the orcs and immobilized them all for a while. But the spell must have been so powerful that they couldn’t control the backlash, and it hit the castle. Only the orcs took most of the blow. Do you see the depressions in the ground and what happened to the bodies?”

  “I thought they’d been trampled by cavalry,” Eel hissed.

  “There aren’t any hoofprints.”

  “I see that now, Kli-Kli. But there are plenty of prints from metal-shod boots.”

  “Aha, those who weren’t caught by the backlash were finished off by the defenders. The Firstborn were unable to resist in any case, and they were dispatched into the darkness. The men didn’t fight a very fair battle here.”

  “If you ask me, that’s no more than the orcs deserve,” said Mumr, spitting down at his feet. “They should stay in their Zagraba and leave our kingdom alone. And as for war … Well, this is war, Kli-Kli, and in war any means are fair. You can demonstrate your nobility in a duel and allow your opponent to pick up the sword that he’s dropped. Here, if you lose your sword, then you lose your head as well. It doesn’t matter why you went to war, what age you are, and how noble you are—you either win and snatch victory, or you rot on the battlefield. In war there is no third way.”

  “But even so, it’s not fair,” Kli-Kli argued stubbornly. “They didn’t even have a shaman with them. Weapons should be fought with weapons, not with magic.”

  “And Sagra be praised that they didn’t have a shaman,” Lamplighter said furiously. “If they did, three times as many of our men would have been killed. This is war, Kli-Kli. Maybe you’ll understand some time.…”

  “I do understand,” the gobliness said reluctantly.

  While we were talking, we came back out onto the road leading to Moitsig and moved away from the half-ruined castle—we could see that there wasn’t a single soul in it—and the field of death. The city came closer and closer.

  “How long ago was the battle?” I asked, breaking the heavy silence.

  “Judging from the fact that they haven’t burned the orcs’ bodies yet, and the crows can still fly—yesterday evening at the earliest,” Eel answered.

  “Why, the gates of Moitsig are standing wide open!” Kli-Kli exclaimed in amazement. “Either the townspeople have stopped being afraid after the battle, or something’s happened.”

  “Nothing’s happened!” said Eel, screwing up his eyes. “Just look how many people there are up on the walls!”

  Well, if those black dots running along the wall were people … We were still too far from the city for me to see.

  “I think we’ve been spotted!” said Egrassa, watching a detachment of horsemen come flying out of the gates.

  “Hardly surprising,” Lamplighter said with a shrug. “We’re in open territory here, anyone can see us. Keep back, Egrassa. You never know…”

  Lamplighter didn’t bother to finish what he was saying, the meaning was clear enough. The lads hurrying toward us might turn out to be just a bit too hot-blooded and keen to hand out punishment. At a passionate gallop it was easy to confuse an elf with an orc.

  Egrassa’s eyes flashed at Mumr’s words but—Sagot be praised—he didn’t reach for his s’kash. I don’t think Lamplighter realized he had mortally insulted the elf.

  “I am not used to hiding behind the backs of others!”

  “Don’t be angry, Egrassa!” Eel put in hastily. “The Master of the Long Sword is talking good sense. It’s best for a bowman to stand in the second line.”

  “Do you intend to fight?” the elf asked, raising his right eyebrow mockingly.

  “No.”

  “Then it makes no difference,” said Egrassa, putting an end to the difficult conversation.

  I was starting to feel a bit nervous. “Hallas!” I called. “Don’t go for your mattock!”

  The riders were coming closer. Four of the warriors directed their horses to the left and started going round our little group. All four of them were armed with bows. The main group came rushing straight at us, making no effort to restrain their horses. I liked the look of this less and less. Unfortunately, Egrassa had the krasta, and you can’t really fight a man on horseback with a dagger, especially when he’s armed with a lance. One of the riders pressed his spurs into the flank of his horse and moved up two lengths ahead of his comrades. What was this lad intending to do? And why had he lowered his lance?

  The ground started to tremble under our feet.

  “Stop, Harold!” Kli-Kli hissed, clinging on hard to my clothes. “If we run, he’ll hit us with his lance! Stay here.… Stay here.…”

  The horse—a huge black beast that could have emerged straight from the darkness—came flying at us. At the very last moment, just when it seemed that its massive carcass would crush us, the horseman reined in his mount. It reared up on its hind legs, flailing at the air with its front hooves and almost splitting Eel’s head open. The Garrakian ducked to one side, keeping his eyes on the rider, but the horseman had eyes for only one target—Egrassa. As soon as the horse’s front feet touched the ground, the unknown warrior thrust with his lance with all his might, aiming for Egrassa’s chest. The elf would have been spitted if not for Lamplighter. In some miraculous manner the puny Wild Heart managed to get between the rider and the dark elf. The bidenhander sliced through the air with a hiss and collided with the lance, knocking it up and away to one side, and then swung into the next stroke, which should have ended with a blow to the enemy’s unprotected side, but at that point the other horsemen rode up.

  The first one struck hard with his lance at the shield of t
he man who had attacked us. The warrior hadn’t been expecting anything of the kind and he lost his seat in the saddle. I caught a momentary glimpse of a white face with an expression of absolute amazement as the lad went crashing to the ground, right at Lamplighter’s feet.

  “Are your brains completely addled, Borrik?” one of the riders barked. “Or have you gone blind?”

  The warrior lying on the ground stared wild-eyed and gulped frantically. He’d obviously taken a hard fall when he left the saddle.

  “Forgive my man, Tresh Elf,” the same rider said to Egrassa.

  “Elf?” the one who was called Borrik finally gasped. “I thought it was one of the orcs.”

  “You thought! I’ll send you up onto the wall to count ravens! I won’t let you back in the saddle for a year! Let me apologize again most humbly for this misunderstanding, Tresh…”

  “Egrassa. Egrassa of the House of the Black Moon,” the dark elf replied, glaring at Borrik as he tried to get up off the ground.

  If there hadn’t been so many horsemen present, the warrior would already have tasted the elf’s s’kash. But Egrassa thought it better for the moment not to put any more strain on relations, and he postponed his vengeance on the young lad for a better time.

  “I am Neol Iragen, lieutenant of the Moitsig Guard,” the horseman said.

  Neol Iragen was over forty years old. Eyes like a cat, thick eyebrows that met on the bridge of his nose, and the despondent features of a petty nobleman that didn’t fit with the piercing blue glint of those eyes and the confident pose in the saddle.

  “Are these, er … people with you, Tresh Egrassa?” The lieutenant stumbled over the word “people,” because it was hard to apply it to a goblin and a gnome.

  “Yes, these are my warriors.”

  I don’t know what Neol Iragen thought, but Kli-Kli and I certainly attracted a couple of suspicious glances. It couldn’t be helped; the gobliness and I just didn’t look like warriors.

  “What brings an elf to our city, when the Black Forest is ablaze?” asked the lieutenant, trying to make his question sound polite.

  “Orders from the king,” said Egrassa, taking out Stalkon’s decree, the same one that we’d shown to the two magicians in Vishki. He handed it to the horseman.

  The warrior took the document and studied the royal seal carefully. I must say that Milord Neol was certainly surprised, but it hardly showed in his face at all—his thick eyebrows merely quivered.

  “When the war began, we were ordered to check any unusual and unexpected travelers,” the lieutenant began cautiously as he returned the document to the elf. “There are all sorts walking the roads now. Including deserters and spies. Your appearance here is very strange, and then these papers … You understand, Tresh Egrassa, we can’t simply let you go just like that?”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We need to check everything, and it would be best if we took you into the city, to the commander of the garrison.”

  “We have nothing against that,” Egrassa said with a casual shrug.

  “Well, that’s marvelous!” Neol Iragen said with a sigh of relief when he realized that the elf had no intention of being stubborn. “Borrik, give Tresh Egrassa your horse!”

  The lad had recovered by this time, and he led the large black beast over to Egrassa without a murmur. Another five riders dismounted to give us their horses. They didn’t offer Kli-Kli a horse. The gobliness was about to take offense and make a scene, but I put her up in front of me, and she seemed quite content with that arrangement.

  As we rode toward Moitsig, we found ourselves in the center of the detachment of riders, who surrounded us, seemingly by chance, just in case these strange travelers might decide that they didn’t really want to visit the city and try to make a run for it.

  “What’s happening with the army? Is Maiding still holding out?” asked Eel, breaking the long silence.

  One of the warriors opened his mouth to answer, but caught a glance of warning from Neol Iragen and swallowed the words that had been on the tip of his tongue.

  “Wait for a little while, soldier,” said the lieutenant. “The commandant will tell you everything.”

  Eel nodded and didn’t ask any more questions. I couldn’t understand the reason for all the secrets. Didn’t he trust the royal decree? To think of us as deserters was stupid, to say the least. And we didn’t fit the role of spies. Orcs would never use men as spies. Or would they? When I remembered the First Human Assault Army that had gone over to the orcs during the Spring War, the concerns of the citizens of Moitsig didn’t seem so strange.

  “Lamplighter!” Egrassa suddenly called to the Wild Heart.

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  Mumr hadn’t been expecting any gratitude from the elf. He screwed his eyes up in satisfaction and grinned from ear to ear.

  * * *

  Moitsig was a seething hive of activity. It was only half the size of Ranneng, and it couldn’t bear any comparison at all with Avendoom, but that didn’t prevent the inhabitants of this southern city feeling for a day that they were the luckiest folk in the Universe.

  The festive atmosphere that filled the squares and streets would have been the envy of any city in the world. The holiday feeling hung in the air—we heard it in the conversations of the townsfolk and the guards at the gates, it rang out in the songs of the revelers at the inns and taverns. It was as if there was no war. Today the inhabitants of the city were victorious. They, and they alone, had crushed a force of three thousand (or perhaps even more) orcs, and what difference did it make how the victory had been snatched from the jaws of fate? The victors are never judged—isn’t that what they say? Today the people were rejoicing and trying to enjoy everything life had to offer, for tomorrow the bleak times would begin again and the war would continue.

  We didn’t ride through the streets crammed with people for very long. Neol Iragen led our group to the municipal barracks. There were as many soldiers here as there were civilians out in the streets. The warriors seemed to be preparing for a march. They were all dashing about from one corner to another. The captains and sergeants were yelling orders, some men were packing their kit, others were saddling horses.

  Were the lads getting ready to give someone a good roasting? Well, it was high time.

  They brought us to the barracks and left us in the company of some soldiers. Egrassa and Eel went off together with the lieutenant of the guard to see the commandant, and we passed the time at the table. The gods be praised, they didn’t intend to starve us to death. Kli-Kli didn’t eat anything, and the moment I let her out of my sight, she disappeared. She must have gone running off after the elf or decided to sniff out some news.

  “I don’t like all this,” Hallas said, chomping away and at the same time fishing a particularly appetizing piece of meat out of the pot. “Celebrations are all very well, a victory should be celebrated, but it’s not good to go playing the fool. What on earth, I ask you, is the point of leaving the city gates wide open? The orcs have always been famous for their rapid attacks. There’ll be a real panic when they turn up, you mark my words, Harold! The guards might not even have time to close the gates, and then what do we do? It’s a lot harder fighting in the streets than up on the walls.”

  “Don’t be so nervous. Everything will be just fine,” Lamplighter said philosophically, and gave a long, drawn-out belch. “This Neol doesn’t seem like a fool. If the gates are open, then there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m sure the area round the city is crawling with scouts, like fleas on a mangy dog. They’ll spot any orcs a league away.”

  “Why can’t you understand, Mumr?” the gnome exclaimed indignantly. “There has to be order in everything! If the gates are open, that’s gross negligence! We gnomes would never commit a stupidity like that.”

  “If Deler was here—may he dwell the light—he’d soon give you an answer,” Lamplighter retorted.

  Hallas suddenly lost interest in the co
nversation, started stirring the soup round with his spoon, and then pushed the pot away.

  “They’ve been gone a long time. I hope this commandant isn’t some kind of petty tyrant who wants to keep us here longer than necessary.”

  “Who’s going to keep us here when we have papers from the king?” Mumr asked in amazement, like a little child.

  “Who’s going to keep us here?” the gnome echoed, mocking his comrade. “A lot of good those papers did us at Vishki! Those magicians never even looked at them properly. If they’d felt the urge, they would have wiped their backsides with them. If it wasn’t for that hand monster, darkness only knows what would have happened to us. Who can guarantee that everything will be all right this time round? Nothing to say? That’s right! No one can give us any guarantee. How about you, Harold? What do you think?”

  “Nothing much, really.”

  “Nothing much?” Hallas exclaimed. “Don’t you have an opinion on the matter?”

  “Hallas, stop blathering,” I said, trying to calm the gnome down. “What’s wrong, don’t you trust Egrassa and Eel?”

  At that the gnome just glared at me with his one eye and tightened his grip on the spoon, preparing to use it on me.

  “Look,” I said soberly, drawing a line under the conversation. “There’s nothing to be worried about. Egrassa and Eel will manage to persuade the commandant somehow.”

  Hallas glowered at me from under his bandage and pulled the pot back toward him.

  “Just the same, they’re all slackers here. They left us without any guards.”

  “Where are you going to run to, if you don’t mind telling me?” asked Mumr, licking his spoon. “There are men all around; you wouldn’t get away without being spotted.”

  “Hey!” said one of the soldiers who was walking past our table. “I know you!”

  The three of us gaped at him. Just an ordinary soldier like any other. I would have sworn I’d never seen his face before. But the crest sewn on to the warrior’s jacket was familiar. A black cloud on a green field—the crest of my dear old friend, Baron Oro Gabsbarg. So this lad was one of the baron’s soldiers. But what wind could have blown him so far from home?