I glanced round. Midge was nowhere to be seen. Without wasting any more time, I reclaimed my knife, wiped it on the dead man’s clothes, and put it back in its scabbard. Then I loaded my crossbow: I pulled on the lever to tighten the string and set the bolts in their firing position. Then, for extra reassurance, I put another bolt between my teeth so that if the first two missed the target I wouldn’t lose too much time reloading. Having armed myself, I began methodically withdrawing to the exit.
I forced myself not to run, although I wanted to dash through the dark rooms and out into the light as quickly as possible. But to hurry would have been to lose control of the situation and, consequently, to make myself vulnerable.
Eventually the damned bookcases and shelves came to an end and I was left facing the corridor that led to the service door. I stopped, trying to decide how best to sneak along a narrow tunnel where it was hard even to turn round, let alone engage in armed combat with a Wild Heart.
It was his shadow that gave him away. It was pale and weak, almost hidden by shafts of light, but I could still see it. Midge might have been an experienced warrior, but he hadn’t done a very good job of hiding. The killer had climbed up a set of shelves and hung there, waiting for me to pass by below him.
We both made our move at the same time—I spun round, raising the crossbow, and he jumped down onto my shoulders with his knife.
The bowstring twanged. The first bolt just missed my enemy as he fell onto me and struck one of the thick volumes standing on the top shelf. I had no time to take a second shot. Or even to jump aside. The killer slumped on top of me with all his weight, and the only reason I wasn’t killed was that I managed to strike him across the wrist with the crossbow with all my might. His knife and my weapon went flying off to one side.
I fell onto my back, hitting my head against the stone floor, and showers of bright sparks exploded inside it. The accursed killer landed on me and without a second’s hesitation, not disconcerted in the least by having lost his knife, he smashed his fist into my face.
Bang! One of the gnomes’ powder kegs exploded on my right temple and I gritted my teeth, almost biting through the bolt I was holding between them. Struggling against the pain, I made a highly inelegant effort to kick him, but this pitiful attempt was unsuccessful. Midge swung his fist back and smashed it into me again. I grabbed the crossbow bolt out of my teeth, swung it, and stuck it into my opponent’s shoulder. He roared and slackened his grip a little bit, but then smashed me in the face with his elbow with a furious growl. Unlike his partners, he wasn’t given to idle conversation, and simply wanted to finish the job as quickly as possible so that he could be on his way.
The finale of our epic battle, which was worthy of being recorded in the frescoes in the royal palace, was that Midge’s sinewy hands grabbed the neck of a certain Harold in a crayfish-claw grip and set about choking him in a rather determined fashion by closing off the flow of air to his lungs.
I punched Midge on the ribs with both hands, but that didn’t have any effect, either. He merely tightened his grip like an imperial hound and leaned over me, gritting his teeth. The bolt in his shoulder was no hindrance to him at all.
Someone began wheezing in a most convincing fashion. Then the wheezing began fading away, retreated into the background, and got tangled up in the shadows. When the darkness had completly subdued me, from out of some other world, a beautiful world full of fresh air, I heard the twang of a bowstring, the whistle of an arrow in flight, and a dull thud. Then something very heavy fell on me, finally pinning me to the floor. Amazingly enough it became easier to breathe.
I lay there without opening my eyes, breathing in that priceless gift of the gods—air. Everything inside me was wheezing and whirling and whistling. My neck hurt unbearably, it was even painful to swallow, but I was breathing, and that was the most important thing just at the moment.
“Alive, my lord!” a voice above me said.
“Get him up!” To judge from the angry voice, that was Baron Frago Lanten in person.
Sheer politeness obliged me to part my heavy eyelids and take a look at the new characters in this never-ending comedy. I was right.
The baron, in an unusually dour mood, was standing over me in the company of about two dozen of his faithful dogs. The heavy item that had fallen on me was none other than the dead Midge. They had shot an arrow straight between his shoulder blades, and the hired killer had decided to die right on top of me.
To be quite honest, I must confess that this was the first time in my life I had ever been so glad to see the municipal guard. In my mind I took back all the bad things I’d ever said about their skill and their intellectual capacity, and swore on the health of the leader of the Doralissians that this week I wouldn’t think anything nasty about them even once.
A soldier took a firm grip on me under my arms and set me on my feet. For some reason the floor was swaying about rather vigorously and I had to make a serious effort not to fall. After its recent encounter with Midge’s fist, my face was burning with an appalling heat, as if someone had briefly held a red-hot poker against it.
“Baron Lanten? You have no idea how glad I am to see you here,” I croaked quite sincerely.
My throat was still sore, and I could still feel the other man’s remorseless fingers on my neck.
“I should think so,” one of the guards snorted.
“Harold, you son of a bitch, what in the name of Darkness are you doing here?” Frago barked. I could see that I’d spoiled his mood for an entire month ahead. “What if we hadn’t turned up?”
“Then the story would have ended very sadly for me,” I muttered.
I hate it when people yell at me.
“And not only for you!” Frago went on, still howling. “The king would have had my hide!”
“How did you know you should look for me here?”
“We didn’t know,” snapped the baron, a little calmer now, and sat down on a chair hastily moved up for him by one of his subordinates. Naturally, no one offered me a seat, but I was in no state to be concerned about etiquette and so I took a stool and made myself comfortable facing the baron.
“We didn’t know,” the baron repeated, and glanced at the guards. “Djig, take a stroll.”
“As you say, milord.”
“We were looking for this criminal,” said the baron, jabbing one finger disdainfully toward Midge’s corpse. “A deserter and a traitor. The Wild Hearts were looking for him, too, but we were luckier. A little bird whispered in my ear that this bold lad was in the Royal Library, so we came to catch him while he was available. We weren’t planning on meeting you.”
It was hardly surprising that Frago himself had decided to take part in the hunt and the arrest. Deserters from the Wild Hearts were regarded as the most dangerous of criminals. And it was very lucky for Midge that he’d caught that arrow in his back. If the Wild Hearts had got their hands on him, they would have talked to him in a rather different tone of voice. He wouldn’t have departed this world quite so easily.
“Let me repeat my question. What are you doing here, Harold?”
“I came to look up an old friend. He’s the custodian of this library.”
“And where is your friend, if you would be so kind as to tell me?”
“He’s dead.”
“Tell me about it.”
So I told him. I had to leave out half of the details, of course. I didn’t say a word about the Master and his servants, or the fact that I had seen some of the killers before that night.
“Well, we can say that you have been very lucky, thief,” the baron chuckled when he had heard my story. It was clear that he could barely tolerate my presence. It obviously enraged him.
“We can say that I’ve been very lucky.” I had already recovered my wits a little after what had happened, and now I was impatient for an opportunity to slip out of there and get as far away as possible. “Am I free to go?”
There was nothing more for me to d
o there—I wouldn’t learn anything from Bolt’s dead body, and the other dead men would be as tight-lipped as . . . well, as dead men.
“Why, have you business to attend to at such a late hour?” The baron chuckled. “I hope it doesn’t involve entering some innocent rich man’s house?”
“Innocent rich men only exist in fairy tales, milord,” I harrumphed, and got up off the stool, firmly intending to be on my way.
The baron seemed about to order me to sit down and shut up, but then Djig appeared and distracted him.
“Milord, there’s one of our men over there.”
“What drivel is this?” Frago asked with a frown.
“If it please milord, there’s no doubt. It’s Yargi. He was on the night shift with the sixth patrol. The Port City.”
“From Justin’s unit?”
“They have another commander now. In that business beside Stark’s Stables Justin—”
“I know, I know. You don’t have to remind me,” Frago snapped.
“Well, what a night!” Frago exclaimed, and spat. “Harold, do you at least know that you bumped off one of my men?”
“Of course no, milord. He didn’t bother to introduce himself before trying to reduce me to prime cuts.”
“I see.” Frago sighed. “Well, there’s a mangy sheep in every herd.”
I could have told the baron that he had more than one mangy sheep in his herd, but I maintained a judicious silence. They say silence is golden, and just recently I’d begun to understand that they’re right.
“Come with me; you can identify him,” Frago said with an imperious gesture.
Uh-huh. Why, of course! I had nothing better to do than go running after the baron like a lapdog up on its hind legs.
“Pardon me, milord, but I have the king’s assignment.”
That earned me another dour glance from Lanten. But he decided it was better not to insist. You didn’t usually argue with the king’s orders, unless you were a goblin jester. It could have a most lamentable effect on your health.
“All right. Get out of here.”
I didn’t wait for the commander of the guard to change his mind, but disappeared into the corridor in a flash. And I didn’t forget to pick up the torch on the way, to make the return journey bright and cheerful. I was in an absolutely foul mood.
15 ANSWERS
Pardon me for the foolish pun, but the Street of the Sleepy Dog was sunk in a deep sleep. It differed strikingly from its sister street—the Street of the Sleepy Cat—in both the arrangement of the houses and their size. The Sleepy Dog was rather short and winding, with an assortment of low-class shops, little old houses, and a couple of inns with reputations that were not exactly the best.
I was standing right in front of one of them. One fine day that huge sign in the form of a knife and an ax promised to forget its public responsibilities and come tumbling down on the head of some unlucky passerby.
As I had expected, the Knife and Ax was empty. For had told me that Gozmo had closed up his little establishment for no apparent reason. Which was rather strange, if you knew how much money he lost by doing that. And not just from the sale of beer, but also from the fees that came his way when contracts for Commissions were concluded inside his inn.
The doors and the shutters were closed, but neither were any real barrier to me. I was in a determined mood and intended to visit Gozmo’s inn that night, come what may. A serious conversation between my old friend and myself was long overdue, and night is the most convenient time for catching an innkeeper off guard. Between three and four in the morning he ought to be sleeping like a log and it’s not very likely that he would be disposed to resist.
At first I felt like simply breaking in as bold as brass through the main door and walking right through the entire inn as if I owned the place, but I bridled my passion and decided to break into Gozmo’s bedroom window. It was a lot simpler, and there would be less fiddling about with locks and bolts.
The window of Gozmo’s bedroom was on the second floor. I had the cobweb rope with me, and it only took me a minute to reach my goal. I had to spend a little more time on the catch. Unfastening it without making a racket was no simple job, but I don’t earn my bread for nothing.
Gozmo was snoring away, trilling like a nightingale; nothing could have been farther from his mind than uninvited guests. There were several china pots with forget-me-nots in my way and I almost knocked them off the windowsill. I had to twist and turn like one of the circus acrobats on the Market Square in order to avoid breaking anything.
Gozmo carried on sleeping serenely. That’s what’s it like to have no conscience at all.
I tiptoed up to him, took the rope lying on his bedside table, and then carefully slipped my hand under the pillow. I was right. My fingers came across something cold. My old friend Gozmo wasn’t quite as stupid and placid as you might think.
After borrowing his throwing knife, I made my way across to an armchair, brushed a few cheap rags off it, and sat down. I wanted to make Harold’s entrance effective. The innkeeper had thoroughly deserved it, so it was worth my while thinking how to arrange everything for maximum effect, so that I could get at least some of my own back on the damned traitor.
When I’d visited Gozmo’s room five years earlier (on that occasion I happened to go in through the door), there had been a heavy hunting horn hanging on one of the walls. Quite a valuable item. Now I got up, walked over to the wall, and felt along it until I found the toy trumpet.
I took out my crossbow, sat down in the armchair again, set the weapon on my knees, and imagined Gozmo’s face. I felt like laughing, but I restrained myself.
I wasn’t afraid of waking anyone else. Gozmo didn’t rent out rooms, so there were no guests at the inn, and after their shift the bouncers went home. We were alone in the building, and as for the inhabitants of the houses round about, they had seen far stranger things in their time. Or rather, heard them.
I raised the horn to my lips, filled my lungs with air, and blew.
What a sound that was! Even I hadn’t expected such an effect! The sudden roar—which was like the rumble of a mountain avalanche mingled with the braying of an ass crazed with terror—went hurtling round the room, bouncing off the walls and setting my ears ringing.
Gozmo stopped snoring, flew a full yard up into the air, together with his blanket, and when he landed he started shaking his head violently, still too sleepy to understand a thing. I had got my satisfaction and I roared in merry laughter.
“Who’s there?” the villain barked. His eyes weren’t accustomed to the dark yet and all he could see was the window.
His hand slid under the pillow like a snake and discovered nothing there.
“Harold.”
“Harold?”
“Who else could it be, visiting you at this hour? Light a candle.”
The innkeeper’s hands were trembling and so it took a while for the light to appear, and when it did, it lit up the old swindler more than it did me. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with an absolutely idiotic expression on his face, batting his eyelids crazily. All he could see of me was a shadow in the armchair, a blurred form on the boundary between light and darkness. The light of the candle simply didn’t reach me; the darkness devoured it when it was barely halfway there. I had to lean forward to bring my face into the circle of light.
“Well, have you recovered?” I inquired derisively.
“Harold, you’re a real bastard!”
“I’m glad that you and I are in agreement on that point. Now let’s talk.”
“What about?” Gozmo looked angry and dumbfounded at the same time.
“There’s a little matter I need to discuss. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking—”
“That’ll do you good,” the innkeeper interrupted.
The bowstring twanged, and a bolt went humming across the room and struck the headboard of the bed, very close to Gozmo. He jumped in the air.
“In the name of Dar
kness! What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy?”
He seemed a little jittery.
“Be so kind as not to interrupt me. I’ve had a hard night and I’ve been feeling a bit on edge. So shut your trap and be so good as to hear me out.”
The innkeeper took my advice and shut up, although his thin lips turned noticeably paler. He couldn’t see the crossbow, but he could sense with every pore in his skin that the weapon was trained on him.
“Right then,” I went on, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. About that conversation we had, and about a lot of other apparent coincidences. Why would a rogue like you suddenly decide to apologize? I was a bit too hasty at the time; I decided that it was all about the garrinch in the duke’s house, the one that you, you shameless villain, apparently forgot to warn me about. You grabbed at that line of explanation because you thought I didn’t know anything and so your precious life was in no danger. But it wasn’t really a matter of the garrinch. Isn’t that right, Gozmo?”
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