by Alexey Pehov
Through the window opposite where he was lying, he could see the crowns of the sycamores and a swatch of clear blue sky. Which meant, as he had supposed, that the fleeting shadow had not been a cloud.
He kept perfectly still and did not take his tense gaze from the window. He cautiously dragged in air through his nostrils. The scent was so slight that even the keen nose of the northerner did not smell it immediately. But when he detected it, Ga-Nor’s blood ran cold. They were in a heap of trouble now. Ug take him if he was mistaken!
The air smelled of almonds.
He only knew of one creature that gave off such a smell. And right now it was not on the side of soldiers of the Empire. If it hadn’t been for the shadow, Ga-Nor never would have sensed the danger. The intelligent creature had placed itself downwind and the forest was not silent. The birds were chirping with all their might, not at all bothered by the presence of an intruder.
What now? Would the enemy wait until they left the hut? How long would its patience last? Could it see him right now?
The northerner glanced at Luk. He was sleeping with his mouth open. The soldier was lying opposite the second window and he didn’t even suspect that his scalp was at risk of becoming a trophy.
Ug, help me! What bad timing!
Trying to make as few movements as possible, Ga-Nor groped for the bread that remained after last night’s meal. He ripped off a piece with his fingers and rolled it up into a ball. He took careful aim and then flicked his makeshift projectile at Luk’s forehead. Luk opened his eyes.
When he saw the northerner’s troubled face, Luk clearly wanted to ask what was going on. Ga-Nor quickly held up his fingers in warning, begging him to keep silent. Thank Ug! He understood. Using his fingers, the Son of the Snow Leopard tried to explain that they were in danger. And that too was understood. Now for the most difficult part—they had to back away from the window so that they weren’t visible from outside. They needed to do it quickly, and if possible simultaneously. He didn’t know which window their adversary was watching from.
Unfortunately, the soldier did not understand the complicated clan sign language of the Children of the Snow Leopard, but he did know the customary army hand signals. The redhead tried his best to explain to him what he had to do.
“On the count of three,” mouthed the tracker. “One … two … three!”
Ga-Nor shot up into the air. There was a whistle, followed by a dull thud. The tracker crashed to the floor, went into a roll, and landed right underneath the window. He quickly looked around.
Luk was alive. Right then he was pressed against the door but his chubby, good-natured face had turned the color of sour milk. A yard-and-a-half-long shaft was sticking out of the wall right where the soldier had just been leaning. It was thick. With violet-red plumage.
“Damn it!” swore the northerner.
“What is it?” gasped Luk, who was scared nearly to death, vividly imagining how he would have been nailed to the wall by that thing.
“Away from the door! Move!”
If there was one thing Luk did not lack, it was quick wits. He didn’t bother asking stupid questions and did what he was ordered. Holding his axe fast in his hand, he rolled to the side and crawled on his stomach to a less dangerous spot between the wall and the stone stove. It was a blind spot for the bowman.
The next arrow punched right through the flimsy door panels, coming out of it two handbreadths. If the guard had stayed put, he’d already be dead.
“Luk? You alive?”
“Seems like,” said the soldier, touching himself with trembling hands. “What is it?”
“A Burnt Soul.”
“A real one?”
He instantly realized the stupidity of that question. This wasn’t one of his old sergeant’s boozy tales.
“Where did it come from?”
“Ask me something easier,” grumbled Ga-Nor. What had brought the creature to the forest was another question entirely. “Sit still, keep your head down.”
“No problem!”
Luk realized that they had been backed into a corner. It was keeping an eye on the hut so that they couldn’t get out. If they stuck their noses outside, they’d get hit by an arrow.
For the time being, Ga-Nor was out of the eye line of the Burnt Soul, but it could easily change its position. Trying not to raise his head and clinging to the wall, the northerner quickly crawled over to a corner where he couldn’t be reached.
Luk tensely watched the Son of the Snow Leopard from the opposite end of the hut. The tracker crouched down and, catching the troubled look of his companion, smiled joylessly. He understood what a mess they were in.
“How long do we have until he gets tired of waiting?” asked the guard.
Ga-Nor noted that the soldier was not panicking and that he had his weapon in hand.
Good for him.
“It all depends on how long he’s been here and what he wants.”
“Scalps. I don’t know about you, but my hair is dear to me.”
“You barely have any left.”
Luk smiled sourly.
“And yet. What do you plan to do?”
“I plan on thinking.”
How could he kill a Burnt Soul without a crossbow? If they tried to run past him, he’d pick them off like fattened hens. Going out the door was suicide, as was the window. And the roof.
Burnt Souls were excellent archers. It is possible that the humans and the Nirits of Bragun-Zan shot more accurately than the inhabitants of the Great Waste, but in terms of strength the Burnt Souls had no equal. The longbows of these creatures rivaled the most formidable crossbows. One of their arrows could easily pierce most of the armor made by the blacksmiths of this world.
The Imperial forces had come up against the warriors of the Burnt Souls a few times since the War of the Necromancers. Most often these confrontations did not end favorably for the humans. The dreaded bowmen had not been seen in the lands of the Empire for a long time, but they were well remembered. And if even the smallest parts of the stories about them were true, dispatching the archer would be far from easy.
“Will he come in here?”
“I don’t know,” replied Ga-Nor after a little thought. “If he’s an idiot then he might. Take a look at the roof. If he climbs up to the smoke hole, he’ll pick us off like rabbits.”
“You go take a look.” Luk picked up his axe with a decisive air. “Screw a toad, but I don’t plan to waste away here.”
Before the Son of the Snow Leopard had time to ask what the soldier was up to, he began to chop away at the floor. The axe rose and fell, breaking the old floorboards. After only a few minutes a hole appeared in the floor, which would be wide enough to crawl through without too much difficulty.
While he was working, the man was out of breath and sweating but his good-natured face looked utterly pleased.
“My father was a hunter. These log houses are always built on stilts. The floor is raised a yard, if not two, above the ground. When they spend the winter, they keep produce down there. We can’t get to the trapdoor; it’s under the window. That’s why I’m doing this.”
“And what then? Are you suggesting that we crawl under the floor?” The northerner’s expression was skeptical.
“No. I’m suggesting that you do that.” Seeing how the red eyebrows lifted upward, Luk rushed to explain. “It’s unlikely that I could kill off that beast, but you can.”
“How will I get out of the ground? Dig a tunnel?”
“I’m telling you, the hut is built on stilts. Planks are fastened between the floor and the ground. They’re all rotten. It won’t take much strength.”
“And while I’m crawling around down there you’re just going to sit it out up here?”
Luk shrugged. “I could crawl around with you down there. That’s not a problem for me. But sneaking up on a Burnt Soul—no way. You know he’d hear me coming a league off. I’ve never gone scouting through the Boxwood Mountains, you know.”<
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Ga-Nor pondered it. A way out was being offered to him. The risk, of course, was great, but they either had to risk something or wait here until they died of hunger. Or until help came for the Burnt Soul. Morts, for example. Then it would be far too late to do anything. And the soldier was right. There was no way he could do this. He walked through the forest like a wild boar, making so much noise that even a deaf man could hear him. He would do more harm than good. Ga-Nor would have to do this himself.
“All right, we’ll do it your way.”
He crept along the wall to the window and then to the stove. Then he had to pass through an area that was in the line of fire. Luk, realizing what was about to happen, moved over. Ga-Nor took a leap and again he anticipated the arrow that struck the floor by a fraction of a second.
“Persistent brute,” said the Son of the Snow Leopard through clenched teeth.
“Screw a toad, at least he missed you.”
The northerner snorted in agreement and, without further delay, slid down into the hole. The storage pit was not very deep; it came up to about waist-high.
“Wait here. In case I call out for you.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Pray for me if you have nothing else to do,” suggested Ga-Nor, and then he disappeared under the floor.
Twilight reigned here, and it smelled strongly of mold, dampness, and earth. He quickly oriented himself and chose a path to the wall that stood opposite the door. The Burnt Soul was unlikely to be keeping watch there. Why would he, when he assumed that the only exits were through the door or the windows?
With all the will in the world he couldn’t straighten up here, so he had to crawl on all fours. Fortunately, he didn’t have far to crawl. The Son of the Snow Leopard stopped at the boards that were fastened to the stilts. They extended down from the walls of the cabin and covered the gap between the ground and the floor. Just as Luk had suggested, parts of the boards were rotten and other parts were nailed haphazardly so that they fit loosely against each other.
Ga-Nor listened closely and didn’t hear anything suspicious. Birds were chirping, insects were buzzing, wind was sweeping through the crowns of the lofty sycamores. The tracker put his eye to a chink between the boards and carefully checked the area. Most of his view was obscured by the blackberry bushes that had grown into a living hedge weighed down by large, dark purple berries. All he could do was hope that his enemy was on the opposite side of the cabin.
Ga-Nor took out his knife, wedged the blade in between the boards, and, using the weapon like a lever, began to clear a path for himself. As he worked, the northerner tried not to put too much force into it; he moved smoothly so that, Ug grant it so, the lumber would not creak. He was successful. The wood gave way easily and after a few minutes of patient effort, the Son of the Snow Leopard climbed out from under the cabin.
Without raising his head, he crawled like a snake on his stomach toward the blackberry bushes. Ignoring the thorns, he struggled through the hedge and crawled through the moss to the nearest sycamore. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to cover a paltry ten yards. But Ga-Nor could rival even the Highborn when it came to the art of merging with a tree to make a single whole. Not a single twig snapped, not even the most fragile bush swayed at his passing, and the birds remained undisturbed.
Once he’d hidden himself in a hollow between the massive roots of the tree, the northerner breathed a sigh of relief. The hardest part was behind him. What came next should be easier. He had the advantage—his enemy did not know that someone had escaped from the cabin. He just had to use it.
True, his crawl through the blackberry bushes had taken its toll. His entire body, including his face, was covered in shallow, bleeding scratches. But he could deal with this aggravating trifle later. A Burnt Soul was not a Mort; its sense of smell was not as strong and so it wouldn’t catch the scent of his blood.
Keeping low to the ground, Ga-Nor ran from the bushes in brief dashes from tree to tree. He didn’t turn back until he’d run about eight hundred yards into the forest.
If not for Luk, he would have kept going. It would be quite a while before his disappearance was discovered. He could cover his tracks so well that not even one of the Damned could find him. But he had to return. Ug would not approve of a Son of the Snow Leopard abandoning his comrade. The reckoning after death would be terrible. Wallowing in the icy abyss of Oblivion was far more terrifying than any Burnt Soul.
Changing direction from the north to the east, he ran for another four hundred yards or so. To an outside observer it would seem that the northerner was meandering throughout the forest without rhyme or reason. But in reality, Ga-Nor was outflanking the ensconced archer in a steep arc, planning to come upon him from behind. It took over an hour of these meanderings for him to quietly draw near the front of the cabin unobserved by his adversary.
The cabin was no more than fifteen yards away. He could already see the closed door with the arrow sticking out of it. But the Burnt Soul was absent, even though all his suppositions led him to believe that it was somewhere nearby, judging by where the shot had come from.
Had it changed position?
This was bad. The creature was sitting under cover and there were many trees and bushes around the cabin. Where could it be hiding? The northerner had hoped to calculate the places from which the Burnt Soul could have taken an easy shot through the window. The first spot was the very place where the Son of the Snow Leopard was lying; the second was thirty paces from him behind a sycamore. But it seemed that there was no one there. Obviously he couldn’t be hiding in the first spot either, or else Ga-Nor would already have departed for Ug’s judgment.
“Where have you gotten to, you filthy little toad?” he whispered through clenched teeth.
Time passed but he still couldn’t find his adversary. There was every indication that for some reason he’d up and left. Ga-Nor did not even begin to pay attention to that idiotic thought. He was far too cautious for that. He was going to wait for as long as he needed to.
A large spotted woodpecker flew over the bushes and caught his attention. The bird alighted on the trunk of a nearby sycamore and then instantly took wing, as if something had frightened it. The tracker peered avidly into the thick brush growing beneath the tree. He’d examined it earlier but he hadn’t noticed any signs of danger and had been content to ignore it in his search for other hiding places where the Burnt Soul could have secreted itself.
There was nothing suspicious. Just the bushes. Very little to frighten a bird.
Again, endless minutes of waiting passed by. Ga-Nor did not take his eyes off the bushes. Then the wind changed. His nose was immediately assaulted by the scent of almonds.
The northerner nearly cursed. The beast was hiding all of twenty paces from him. He was so blind that if it were not for the bird, he would never have noticed his enemy. Thank Ug that when his eyes betrayed him, he still had his nose.
He began to crawl backward and to the side. When the distance was shortened to ten paces he saw the Burnt Soul. A head, an upper body, and two arms. Instead of hips and legs these creatures had a short, scaly serpent’s tail. It wasn’t clear what purpose it served, since the brutes moved through the air as if by magic, hovering over the ground. But not very high. It was rumored that they could rise up to the height of a grown man.
The creature’s skull seemed misshapen. A too high and heavy brow, a sunken face, delicate cheekbones. Sparse hair, into which the red-and-purple feathers of some unknown bird were braided. Yellow, shriveled skin, a small lower jaw; the face of an old man. It had no nose or ears. In their place were black holes. Its long arms, as thin as a skeleton’s, looked deceptively weak but they could easily bend a horseshoe. A dirty gray-green tunic was thrown over the desiccated, angular body. A quiver with a bundle of arrows was on its back. Another three arrows were planted in the ground. The bow grasped in the creature’s hands was so large that Ga-Nor began to have some misgivings. You’d use a bow
like that to hunt Snow Trolls, not humans.
The archer was completely focused on the cabin. The Burnt Soul didn’t bother to look around and had no clue that a human had been hiding near it all this time. Ga-Nor unsheathed his sword. He took a step toward his enemy. He froze. Another step. He froze again. Now more than ever he resembled a large, redheaded snow leopard. A cat stalking its unwitting prey.
The Burnt Soul shifted and the northerner stopped stalking him and rushed forward. The beast heard him, yelped, turned, and raised its bow. It was far more nimble than he had thought it would be.
At the last moment, Ga-Nor leaped aside and the arrow flew past his ear with an aggravated buzz. He brandished his sword and swept downward, driving it into the creature’s face. The sword sheared through skin, flesh, bone, and brain, destroying the head of his opponent. Its back arched and it flew upward a good two yards; then it fell back to the ground, crashing into the bushes. Ga-Nor did not stop at this and struck the already dead Burnt Soul with three more tremendous blows. In the tracker’s opinion, the creature deserved it.
The Son of the Snow Leopard returned to the cabin and drummed on the door.
“Luk, get out here!”
The door creaked open and the soldier gingerly stepped out of the cabin.
“Screw a toad! I was thinking he’d done you.”
“It was I who ‘did’ him.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“It’s from the blackberry bushes. The beast almost shot me.”
“Was it alone?”
“Yes. Let’s get out of here.”
“I want to see it.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never seen a Burnt Soul.”
Ga-Nor shrugged his shoulders indifferently and indicated the spot where the body lay. He went into the cabin and quickly packed his things into his bag. When he got outside, he could see Luk circling the carcass. The redhead walked over to the guard and also looked at the corpse. The tracker couldn’t really see why it was so interesting.