“Well done, thief.”
Oho! That was the first time I’d ever heard a note of approval in his voice.
“We have to get clear of Ranneng tonight,” the count said, striking his horse with his heels to set it moving.
I offered up thanks to Sagot. In the few days we had spent in this city, I had learned to hate it with all my heart.
10
The Black River
By my reckoning, it was only four in the morning, at the latest, but the Learned Owl was abuzz with preparations. We rode into the yard of the inn to find Hallas and Deler arguing furiously as they loaded up the packhorses for the road.
“Harold, I knew you could do it!” said Uncle, giving me a friendly slap on the shoulder.
Thanks to the elfin shamanism, the wound in the sergeant’s arm, where it had been hit by a crossbow bolt, was now completely healed.
“Well, I didn’t,” I said.
“Take it,” said Miralissa, handing me the Key. “It’s best if you have it.”
The last time she had tried to give me the artifact to keep, I had refused, but now … Maybe it really was best to carry it around with me.
Without saying a word, I hung the Key round my neck and tucked it under my clothes.
“Lafresa tried to break the bonds, but she couldn’t manage it,” I told the elfess.
“That was to be expected. It’s not that easy to break the bonds with the Dancer in the Shadows. The Master still does not know that the goblin prophecies have started coming true.”
“So you believe in all that nonsense our jester spouts?” I asked sourly.
“Why not?” asked the elfess, tossing her braid back over her shoulder. “So far his prophecies have not misled us.”
Uncle walked across to us.
“Milord Alistan, Tresh Miralissa … Everything’s ready, we can start.”
“Good. Master Quidd!”
“Yes, Lady Miralissa?” said the innkeeper, hurrying up.
“Have you done everything?”
“Yes, exactly as you told me.” Quidd started counting off his tasks on his fingers. “I’ve sent the servants home for two weeks, taken all my relatives out of the city, I’m closing down the inn, and will leave soon myself. I never saw you, or rather, I saw you, but I have no idea what you were doing, I’m too unimportant…”
“Precisely, Master Quidd. Don’t delay, leave as soon as possible; you could get caught in the backlash. Take this for your trouble.”
The innkeeper accepted the purse full of coins and thanked her effusively.
“Allow me to give you some advice, Lady Miralissa. Better leave by the Muddy Gates, they are never closed for the night, and for a coin the guards will forget that you were ever there.”
“Well then, we’ll do that, and now—good-bye!”
Quidd bowed once again, wished us a safe journey, and went back into the inn to conclude his final pieces of business.
“For a coin they’ll forget us, but for two they’ll remember us only too well,” I said, not talking to anyone in particular.
“Good thinking, thief. Let Master Quidd think that we will leave via the Muddy Gates. That won’t do any harm to him, or to us. But we’ll try to leave the city through the Festival Gates.”
Bass was sitting on the porch and watching our preparations curiously. The darkness take me, I’d completely forgotten about him.
“Your horse,” said Ell, holding out a bridle to Snoop.
“Thank you, but I place more faith in my own feet. I’ll walk home. Harold, can I see you for a moment? I need to have a word.”
Ell blocked his way.
“You’ll have plenty of time for talking. You’re going with us.”
“With you?”
“With us?” I gasped. “Why in the name of darkness should he go with us? That’s the last thing we need right now!”
“You and I are in complete agreement there, Harold. I also think your friend should be left here. Preferably buried under the pigsty. But Tresh Miralissa thinks otherwise.”
“Curses!” I exclaimed loudly. I didn’t really like the idea of traveling in the same group as Bass. But I definitely didn’t want him to be killed.
“It’s very simple, Master Bass,” said the elfess from the House of the Black Moon. “We simply cannot leave you here.”
“You’ll start gossiping,” Ell went on. “And we don’t want that.”
“I promise I’ll be as silent as the grave.”
“You men make lots of promises, but you don’t keep many of them. But you’re quite right; if you decide to stay, you’ll be exactly as silent as the grave.…”
No more explanations were required—the choice was a journey on horseback with us, or a crooked elfin blade in the throat.
“Harold! You say something to them!”
“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do,” I said, shaking my head regretfully. “I think it will be best for everyone if you go with us.”
Miralissa was right, even if Snoop didn’t blurt out the truth on his own, the count’s men could find him. To the elfin way of thinking, it was simpler just to kill him, but since I put in a word for him and he’d helped us, the dark elves made an exception.
“This is insane! It must have been the Nameless One who prompted me to get involved with your gang!” Bass said, and spat angrily, realizing that he had no way out and now he would have to share our journey with us. “And where are we going?”
“You don’t need to know that, man. Get into the saddle and keep your mouth shut. And if you get any ideas about trying to escape, remember—I’ll be right there beside you.”
Ell had taken a very great “liking” to my friend from the first moment they met.
“This is what I get for giving someone a helping hand!” the cardsharp exclaimed, still furious as he climbed up onto the horse. I must say, he did that rather clumsily.
“Don’t take it to heart, it could have been worse,” I consoled him.
Little Bee reached her muzzle out to me, looking for a dainty tidbit, but I didn’t have anything in my pockets and just shrugged.
“Here,” said Marmot, handing me an apple.
The horse gobbled down the treat and gave me a good-natured sideways glance, looking for more.
“Harold!” said Kli-Kli as he rode up to me, looking like a little hummock on the back of his huge black steed. “Do you think you could give me back my medallion?”
“Ah, of course.” I’d forgotten about Kli-Kli’s little knickknack. “Here. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” The goblin hung the trinket round his neck. “Right then, ready for the road?”
“No.”
“I understand,” the jester said with a laugh. “Nights spent out in the open air and gruel brewed up by Hallas aren’t what you like best, then?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer, because just then Deler appeared, cursing the green goblin to the heavens: “Kli-Kli! Was it you who took the last bottle of wine?”
“Harold, I think I’ll get started now,” the jester said hastily. “No, I didn’t take anything! What would I want with your Asmina Valley?”
“Then how do you know what it’s called?” the dwarf asked, squinting at him suspiciously.
“Oh, it just came to me.”
“Kli-Kli, stop … stop, I tell you! Ah, you thieving little squirt!”
* * *
We rode through the Festival Gates without running into any kind of trouble. The sleepy guards swung the gates open for us as obligingly as they could manage and let us out of the city, without asking a single question about the reasons for our hasty departure in the night.
The gold handed to the corporal worked better than any official charters with the seal of the city council.
We covered the distance between Ranneng and the Iselina in the next two days, galloping at a furious pace all the way, in order to put as much distance as possible between us and any pursuit sent out by Count Ba
listan Pargaid.
The main road we rode along was very busy. There were travelers and artisans hurrying to Ranneng and away from Ranneng, and strings of carts carrying all sorts of things to be sold. We came across a village about every league, so our squad didn’t have to spend the night in an open field.
Bass was gloomy. He had either Ell or Uncle behind him all the way. Luckily, my old friend didn’t think of trying to escape—he realized what the risks were. When I asked if Snoop was really going to go all the way to Hrad Spein with us, Miralissa said she would find somewhere to put him.
“There are many guard posts and fortresses on the border. He can wait there until we come back, and then he can go anywhere he wants.”
I didn’t tell Bass about what the elfess had decided. I don’t think he would have been too delighted by the news.
At five in the evening of the second day we reached the Iselina.
I caught sight of the glittering ribbon of the river when we were still in the forest—the sun was glinting off the water, and the reflections shone straight into my eyes between the trees. And the sight when we emerged into open space simply took my breath away.
Our group was standing on a low elevation, with the broad band of the river laid out in front of us. During our journey I had seen plenty of streams and rivers, both great and small. But none of them bore any comparison to the Iselina.
I was looking at the mother of all the northern rivers. Huge, wide, and deep, it began somewhere far off, where the streams flowing from the Mountains of the Dwarves came together to form a mighty hissing torrent that flowed on through the Forests of Zagraba and emptied into the Sea of Storms, away to the southeast.
We could see a large village on the road ahead. Not far from it the mighty ramparts of a castle towered up into the air.
“Marmot,” I said to the Wild Heart. “What settlement is that?”
The warrior gave me a rather strange look and replied: “Boltnik.”
“That Boltnik?”
“Yes.”
Everyone remembers the bloodbath at Boltnik that swallowed up a quarter of our army during the Spring War. The men were standing on the bank of the Iselina, waiting for the orcs’ storm troopers to start crossing. At the time no one knew that fifty leagues farther upstream, the Firstborn had broken through the human rearguard and driven the men back to Ranneng. Then they attacked those who were waiting for them at Boltnik from the rear.
The enemy from Zagraba pinned the men back against the river, and the far bank was black with the teeming hordes of orcish bowmen. Almost no one managed to escape from this encirclement; only a tiny number got away by water or broke out of the ring. When this happened, men realized that the elves had chosen the name of this river well—Iselina means “Black River.” But during those terrible days, the river was not black, it was red with the blood of men and the Firstborn.
Alistan did not lead our group into the village; we avoided it, leaving the white houses with red tiled roofs on our right. Nobody really wanted to go into a place haunted by ghosts.
Eel and Arnkh were the only ones who went to the village, to find out about the ferry to the other side of the river, while we stayed in a small spinney right beside the water, slightly downstream from Boltnik.
The air by the river had a fresh smell of damp grass. The riverbank was overgrown with sedge and reeds, and weeping willows hung their silver-green leaves right down to the surface of the water.
A pair of gadflies, which Kli-Kli called “buzzers,” immediately began circling round the horses, and the goblin started hunting them.
From here the opposite bank looked very far away. I wouldn’t have bet that I could swim all the way across. The trees on that side looked tiny, only half the size of my little finger.
“What are you gazing at, Harold? Never seen a river before?” said Hallas, squatting down beside me and lighting up his pipe.
“Not one as big as this.”
“If you ask me, it’s best not to see any. A river means a boat. And I hate boats!”
“If you haven’t already realized, our gnome here is afraid of traveling on water,” explained Honeycomb, who was standing close by.
“Gnomes aren’t afraid of anything! It’s just that boats aren’t for gnomes!”
“Mattocks are for gnomes,” Deler snorted. “Don’t get nervous, Lucky! You’ll get across without suffering too much. In any case, it’s not a canoe, it’s a ferry.”
“In other words, just a big boat!” Hallas said morosely, blowing out a ring of smoke.
“He gets seasick,” Honeycomb chuckled.
Hallas started puffing away even harder, peering gloomily at the watery expanse.
“Seasickness isn’t the worst thing! I don’t know how to swim,” Kli-Kli informed us with insufferable pride.
“You mean not at all?” asked Hallas, looking at the jester.
“I mean I can swim like an ax! But I’m not at all afraid.”
“Piffling pokers, I told you, gnomes aren’t afraid of anything!” Hallas said, as Eel and Arnkh came back.
“We can’t leave yet, milord,” said Arnkh, his bald patch gleaming with sweat. “It’s some kind of town holiday today. Nobody’s working, both ferries are standing idle, everybody’s drunk. We won’t be able to move on from this bank until tomorrow morning.”
“Ah, darkness!” our commander swore.
We moved closer to the ferries, in order to be the first to cross to the far side in the morning. The two massive wooden structures with huge drums, onto which the thick chains were wound, stood about a quarter of a league from Boltnik. They were about a hundred yards apart from each other, and owned by completely different people.
We found one of the ferrymen. The old man was sitting in his house on the bank of the river, and he absolutely refused to take us across, even for all the gold in Siala.
“The workers are celebrating, who’s going to haul the chain? They’ll come back tonight, sleep it off, and then why wouldn’t they take fine gentlemen like yourselves across and first thing in the morning?” he croaked.
“Careful, granddad, or we’ll go to your competitor!”
“Off you go, gentlemen, I’m not keeping you here, am I? Only there’s no point, I swear by all the gods. It’s the same thing there. Nothing works until morning. It’s our holiday.”
But the stubborn old-timer was only too delighted to let Markauz, Miralissa, and Egrassa use his house. The ferryman narrowed his eyes contentedly at the sound of money jingling in his pockets as he tramped off to the town.
“This is plain stupid,” said Bass. “How do they feed their families? Apart from being so far from the town, he has a competitor right beside him.”
“Think again,” Uncle said with a chuckle. “The ferries constantly carry goods across for the Border Kingdom, and they move soldiers from one bank to the other. The army pays well.…”
“The nearest ford is forty leagues to the north of here, Boltnik is the last large settlement in these parts,” said Arnkh. “On the other bank there are only small scattered villages and noblemen’s castles.”
We didn’t get any soft beds, and we had to spend the night on the riverbank. The Wild Hearts took this calmly—they had spent nights in the snowy tundra of the Desolate Lands, where only a fire and a blanket keep a sleeping man from freezing to death, so what was wrong with a night out in the fresh air beside some river or other? But Bass moaned miserably: “Not only do you drag me off to some mysterious place, you make me feed the mosquitoes on the way! Ah, darkness!” He smacked himself on the forehead, flattening several of the little bloodsuckers at one go.
Snoop was right about that—the air was simply buzzing with them. The little monsters showed up just before evening and launched into a spectacular feast. Every now and then there were curses and deafening slaps. Mosquitoes were dispatched to the light by the dozen, but that evidently did nothing to deter their hungry comrades. And there was no wind to blow the tiny bloodsuckers
away from the river.
Kli-Kli suggested a remarkable goblin shamanic spell that he said would wipe out every mosquito for ten leagues around, but, remembering his conjuring with the pieces of string that destroyed the house of the Nameless One’s followers, we told the fool what he could do with his wonderful idea.
The bloodsuckers carried on feasting. What made me most furious was they kept trying to get into my ears and my mouth, buzzing repulsively all the time. Finally, even Ell couldn’t stand it anymore and he went to Miralissa for help. When he came back, he tossed some powder into the fire we’d made with logs borrowed from the ferryman’s woodpile, and the air around us was filled with a spicy, herbal smell. The mosquitoes started dying by the hundreds, and our suffering was over in literally just a few minutes.
It was getting dark, and the water in the river began to look like a black mirror, with the clouds drifting across the sky reflected in it. A few moments later the setting sun cast its final rays on the smooth surface of the water, and it lit up like molten bronze.
There was a splashing sound in the reeds nearby.
“That’s the fish jumping, there must be a pike hunting small fry,” Uncle said with a sigh.
“I could just do with some fish soup,” said Arnkh, smacking his lips dreamily. “I’m sick of Hallas’s garbage.”
“Don’t eat it if you don’t want to!” the gnome snapped in reply.
“Don’t take offense, Lucky. You probably fancy a bite of fish yourself,” Arnkh replied good-naturedly, lowering his feet into the river water. “Ooh! As warm as milk fresh from the cow!”
“Never mind what I might fancy a bite of. Where do we get it from, that’s the question.”
“Let’s just catch a whole lot of fish!” said Kli-Kli, struck by a brilliant idea. “I’ve never gone fishing in my whole life!”
“And where will you get the tackle?”
“Ah, the tackle’s no problem. We’ll take some rope, a couple of nails, some bait, and throw it out as far as we can. Maybe some fool will bite,” said Uncle, stroking his beard.
“Let’s do it! Come on!” Kli-Kli said, and started jigging about on the spot.
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