Shadow Prowler (51 page)

“If possible, but that was not the main goal. Tomcat said that it was not far, only three leagues away at the most. By any calculations, they should already have caught up with us.”

“There’s a hostile shaman somewhere nearby?” I guessed.

“Yes, you’re right. But even I didn’t sense anything.” She reached up and gently picked a small leaf from my shoulder. “If not for Tomcat’s caution, we would already have been attacked from behind.”

“And how long are we going to run like this?”

“Certainly as far as Ranneng. You must agree that joining battle with someone unknown is too dangerous; we might lose the advantage that we have at present. And there are magicians of the Order in the city, so our enemies will not venture into it.”

“Pardon me, milady. But I do not agree with you there,” I said, and shook my head. “If they could get into the king’s palace, they will certainly get into Ranneng.”

“Do you suggest that we should not enter Ranneng at all?”

“It could be that they are trying to lure us there.”

“Why?” she asked, looking at me curiously.

“Let’s just call it a premonition.”

“Like Tomcat’s?”

“No—unlike Tomcat, I am sometimes wrong.”

Miralissa’s black lips smiled sadly.

“Perhaps you are right. But we cannot do without the city. There is no way we can avoid it. Otherwise, once past the Iselina, it will be too hard without fresh horses and supplies. In any case, attacking us there is not the same as attacking us here when there is not a soul around. We shall be in Ranneng in three days. There are still two hours left until dawn, go and sleep.”

“I won’t fall asleep now.”

“I have to compile a few spells. Just in case. I sense there may be trouble ahead.”

“Then I will not disturb you. Good night.”

A slight bow of the head and she had already picked up her stick from the ground and was drawing signs in the ashes.

I went back to my place and straightened out my crumpled blanket. As morning approached it had turned cooler and the first, topaz-like drops of dew had appeared on the stalks of the grass.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Uncle asked me peevishly as he made his round of the camp. “Even the horses are sleeping like logs, and here you are making a racket. Ah, you’re as green as they come. In your place I’d be glad of every free minute I could get.”

He walked away, muttering quietly.

Well, what the Wild Heart had said made sense. I lay down on my improvised bed, and immediately leapt back up, trying not to shout out. Some swine had put a briar in my blanket! I cast an angry glance at the jester, but he was sleeping calmly. Or at least pretending with consummate skill.

No point expecting a leopard to change his spots. I stopped worrying, threw the briar as far away as possible, and lay down. And at that very moment I almost choked on my own laughter. Someone had come off even worse than me, only he didn’t realize it yet. Loudmouth was still sleeping with his mouth wide open, and there was a dandelion stalk sticking out of it.

The last thing I saw before I fell asleep again was Miralissa, a solitary figure sitting beside the fire, drawing incomprehensible signs on the ground. I wanted to go to her, but knew I could never follow this road where it might lead . . . even if she let me. She is what she is—an elfess and a royal one, no less, and a magic user. Harold is what he is—wolf-single, thank you, and planning to stay in that happy state. We were comrades, no more. That was fine with me.

G
uess who was to blame for the general tumult and commotion the next morning? Why, Kli-Kli, of course. Miralissa caught the goblin just as he was writing “eensy weensy spider” in the ashes beside the elfess’s magical signs. Naturally, she almost tore his hands off for his artistic efforts. And so all morning the goblin tried to keep as far away from her as possible.

“Harold!” he whined guiltily, not having found any more willing listener in our little party. “I really didn’t mean anything by it! I thought they were just scrawly scribbles and that was all! Please talk to her for me. She’s very mad at me.”

“I think you should talk to her yourself. I don’t have any influence with her.”

“You do. You have the most influence on her royal elfess majesty.”

“Oh, really? The elf princess listens to the thief? The madhouse is just down the road, they’re expecting you.”

“Harold, she doesn’t think of you as a thief, she thinks of you as a Dancer.”

I looked at him blankly for a moment, then shook my head. A Dancer.

Eel was already in the saddle, waiting for the count.

“We’re setting off now. Follow this road and do not turn off anywhere. We’ll try to catch up with you by evening.”

“If we do not meet along the way, look for us in Ranneng, at the inn called the Learned Owl,” Miralissa told them in farewell.

Alistan nodded, then he and Eel dug their heels into the sides of
their steeds and went galloping back to the place where Egrassa and Tomcat ought to be.

“Come on, men,” Uncle said with a clap of his hands. “Mount up.”

That day was the hottest of our journey so far. The sun was so pitilessly fierce that even the stalwart and obstinate Arnkh removed his chain mail. Honeycomb stripped completely down to the waist, exposing his bulging muscles, with their abundant display of scars and tattoos. Many others followed his example. Kli-Kli borrowed some rag from Marmot and tied it round his head, after first moistening it with water from a flask.

The road set our backs to the hot sun and wound between open fields and thickets of low, scrubby bushes. There were no clouds and the azure blue of the sky was so painfully bright in our eyes that we had to squint all the time. Apart from the imperturbable elves, the entire party looked like a herd of cockeyed, delirious Doralissians.

The syrupy, incandescent air flowed into my lungs in a clammy, scorching wave. I would have given half my life if only it would rain.

After about two hours of uninterrupted galloping under the unblinking eye of the intense sun, the broad fields fell away behind us and fused into the horizon, giving way to a hilly area with a generous scattering of low pine trees. Instead of the smell of wild grasses and flowers, the constant buzzing of insects and chirping of crickets, we caught the sharp scent of pine resin and heard the serene, impassive silence of the forest.

The road wound between the low hills, sometimes climbing up onto one of them and then immediately, without pausing, diving downward again. Smooth ascents alternated with equally smooth descents, and the journey continued like that for quite a long time.

The forest along the sides of the road grew thicker and the trunks of the trees crowded closer together, hiding almost all the sky behind their leaves. The low, crooked pines gave up their place in the sun to aspens and birches. All the ground in the forest along the road and on the surrounding hills was covered with bushy undergrowth. Now at last, thanks to the dense wall of trees, we had some blessed coolness—the weakened rays of the sun no longer lashed our shoulders like red-hot whips; everybody heaved a sigh of relief and Arnkh hurried to put his beloved chain mail back on, now that he had the opportunity.

For the next hour we rode in the relative coolness of the welcoming forest.

But our good mood didn’t last for long. How could it? As yet, we still knew nothing about the missing Tomcat and Egrassa, or about Alistan and Eel. What reason did we have for feeling jolly?

And so everyone was tense and taciturn. Lamplighter completely forgot about his beloved reed pipe. Kli-Kli didn’t crack any of his eternal dim-witted jokes, and even Deler and Hallas stopped arguing, which was something absolutely unheard of since the very beginning of our journey. The dwarf glowered and stroked the blade of his enormous poleax; the gnome puffed away on his pipe, exhausting his final reserves of tobacco. Uncle growled and tugged on his beard. Loudmouth snarled good-naturedly.

As soon as the road climbed the next low hill and the wall of the forest no longer blocked the view, one of my companions was certain to look back. But the road was still empty, and we rode on, gradually becoming ever more sullen.

Miralissa and Ell talked about something in low voices and she occasionally chewed on her lips, either in frustration or fury. Waiting is the worst thing of all. I know that from my own experience.

At a place where a stream crossed the road, Miralissa said, “We’ll stop on that hill.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the empty road for perhaps the hundredth time that day. “We’ll make a halt there.”

“Alrighty,” said Uncle, supporting the elfess’s proposal. “We need a rest. It’ll be evening soon, and we’re still riding hard.”

Uncle was right. My back was aching outrageously after galloping for so long. What I really wanted to do was get down off Little Bee, lie on the grass, and have a good stretch.

“Harold,” said Lamplighter, riding up and distracting me from my daydreams, “do you think Milord Alistan will manage to catch up with us?”

“I don’t know, Mumr,” I replied wearily. “It’s not evening yet.”

“I hope Miralissa won’t be foolish enough to send anyone else on these dubious reconnaissance missions.”

I was also hoping very much that the dark elfess’s sense of reason was in good working order. If anyone else left the party, our numbers would
be reduced to a laughable level. Our group needed to stay together for as long as possible.

The road started running up a hill, and the forest reluctantly slipped downward—the hill was too tall for it, and the time had not yet come for the trees to climb to its summit.

“A halt,” said Loudmouth, jumping down smartly from his horse to the ground.

“I don’t think so,” said Miralissa, shaking her head. “Get back in the saddle.”

I followed her gaze. Up ahead of us, a little more than a league away, there were several columns of thick smoke rising up out of the forest.

“What is it?” asked Uncle, screwing up his eyes.

“As far as I recall, it’s Vishki, a small village, maybe forty or forty-five households,” Honeycomb replied.

“And what’s there that could burn like that?” asked Deler, reaching for his poleax again without even realizing it.

“Well, it’s definitely not the houses, the smoke’s too black, as if they’re burning coal,” said Hallas, puffing stubbornly on his pipe.

“Get ready, lads! Put your armor on, and we’ll find out what the fire’s eating down there!” Uncle instructed.

“And I’d like to know what swine lit it!” said Lamplighter.

The moment there was something to do apart from the hard riding that the soldiers had grown so sick of during the last few days, they all livened up. Any goal was better than being left in a state of total uncertainty for days on end, not knowing where the enemy was and which foul creature you could feed a yard of steel to in order to improve your own foul mood. I could understand the men perfectly; for soldiers, inactivity is the worst possible torment.

“Harold, do you need a special invitation?” asked the goblin, riding up to me on Featherlight. “Where’s your chain mail?”

“What chain mail?”

“The chain mail we chose for you,” Kli-Kli responded irritably.

“I’m not going to cover myself in metal,” I said rudely.

“You really ought to,” said Marmot, who had already taken his chain mail off the packhorse and was putting it on over his shirt. “Armor, you know, can be quite wonderful for saving your life.”

“Ordinary chain mail won’t save you from a crossbow anyway. A sklot will shoot straight through it.”

“Not everybody has sklots, and the enemy doesn’t just use crossbows. It’ll stop you getting scratched, if nothing else.”

Rip me into a hundred pieces, but I have a prejudice against wearing metal on my body. I’ve been used to managing without armor all my life, and I feel no better in chain mail than some people do in the grave. Cramped and uncomfortable.

“Just look at all the others,” Kli-Kli persisted.

The warriors of the platoon were already dressed up in the armor that had so far been left on the packhorses because of the rather hot weather. But in my view an ordinary fire, even if it was rather big, didn’t merit such precautions.