Shadow Chaser (39 page)

When I felt someone’s hands take hold of me, I was on the point of fainting.

“Harold, let go of Kli-Kli. Harold!” Marmot’s voice said somewhere close by.

I reluctantly released my grip on the goblin’s clothes.

“The bank’s not far, don’t struggle!” Ell was breathing heavily; the fast swim had tired him.

If I could have managed it, I would have giggled. Don’t struggle! Wasn’t that what I’d said to Kli-Kli?

When my feet touched the bottom and Ell and Honeycomb dragged me onto the bank, it was too miraculous to believe. I’d made it after all, Sagot be praised!

I sank down on all fours, exhausted, and puked up river water. I felt better for that. I spat out some sour saliva, and someone slapped me on the back:

“Are you alive, thief?”

“I thi-ink so, Milord Al-listan.” I was shuddering violently.

Somewhere nearby Kli-Kli was coughing hoarsely.

“Take a sip,” said Deler, sticking his flask under my nose.

I nodded gratefully and took a big swallow. A second later a gnomish powder barrel exploded in my stomach, searing my insides with raging flame.

A crazy thought passed through my mind: “Poison!”

Tears poured out of my eyes and I tried to take a breath, but I couldn’t, I just started coughing.

“That’s not beer, you know, it’s Fury of the Depths! Did you feel it? Come on, Harold, get up!” said Deler, taking back his flask.

I sat up with an effort and started pulling off my wet clothes.

“Those idiots have killed all the ferrymen,” Hallas hissed fiercely through his teeth, looking at the far bank through a small spyglass. “They’re pushing off, I swear by the mountains!”

The horsemen were dashing about on the far bank, and fifteen or twenty of them were just setting off on the ferry with the clear intention of getting to us. I couldn’t see Lafresa from where I was.

“Who are these lads? What do they want?” Hallas said, with his beard bristling fiercely.

“Balistan Pargaid’s men, no doubt,” Alistan Markauz replied, drawing his sword. “Ready yourselves for action. Lady Miralissa, can you do anything to help?”

“Only with my dagger and bow. That woman is blocking me.”

“Ell? Egrassa?”

“It’s too far, the arrows can’t reach that bank. Or the ferry, yet. We’ll be able to fire at four hundred paces.”

“And what if the witch tries blasting us with another one of those things!” Mumr asked warily, leaning both hands on the cross guard of his bidenhander, which was stuck into the ground.

“No, a spell like that takes five or six hours to prepare,” the elfess replied as she observed the approaching ferry. It had already covered a quarter of the distance between us.

“Honeycomb! Honeycomb, wake up! We’ll mourn for them later! Into battle, warrior!” Alistan ordered.

The young soldier roused himself and gave a gloomy nod as he picked up his ogre-hammer.

Mourn them? Who? I thought stupidly. My head wasn’t working at all, and I still had the taste of river water and slime in my mouth. “Darkness! Were we the only ones who escaped from the ferry?”

Uncle, Arnkh, Eel, the ferrymen … had they all been killed? It was impossible.… It simply couldn’t be true!

I looked round desperately, trying to count the men that we still had. The first one I saw was Eel in soaking wet clothes. He must have been swimming behind me. The Garrakian warrior’s chest was heaving rapidly; the swim had obviously taken its toll on him, too. He hadn’t abandoned his swords, and I could only imagine the effort it must have cost him to reach the bank alone.

The elves, holding their bows at the ready, waited in silence for the ferry to come within range. It was already in the middle of the river.

“Harold, let’s clear out,” said Bass, running up to me. “There’s going to be a bloodbath any minute!”

“He’s talking good sense, Harold,” said Hallas. “You’re not warriors. You’d better wait it out behind us. Ah, if I only had a cannon, I’d make short work of that boat.”

“A cannon!” Kli-Kli laughed crazily, and stopped wringing out his poor cloak. “Well done, Lucky! Why, of course, a cannon! Harold, wake up! Where’s your bag? Get the cannon out!”

“Has fear completely addled your brains?” I asked, afraid that the goblin really had gone insane after our dip in the river. “What cannon?”

“You know the one.” And without explaining anything, Kli-Kli bounded across to where I had dropped my bag, tipped everything out of it onto the ground, and started rummaging through the magic vials.

“There it is!”

Kli-Kli raised the vial, full of dark cherry-red liquid with golden sparks floating in it, above his head and then dashed it against the ground. And almost immediately an absolutely genuine gnomish cannon appeared out of thin air.

“Piffling pokers!” Deler exclaimed, gaping wide-eyed.

Hallas was struck speechless. He stood there like a statue, with his mouth wide open and his eyes staring out of his head. Someone standing behind me drew in a noisy breath through clenched teeth. And I must admit that I was pretty stunned as well.

After the hard journey and all the misfortunes we had suffered, I had completely forgotten about the minor spot of trouble I’d had at Stalkon’s palace, when Kli-Kli stole a vial just like this one from me and smashed it against a cannon belonging to some gnomes, which immediately disappeared, just as it was supposed to do. The furious gnomes had almost torn the jester into a thousand tiny little green pieces for using the carrying spell on their beloved treasure. Break a vial like that on any object, and it disappears; break another one, and it reappears.

I’d been planning to use that spell at Hrad Spein, in case we discovered incalculable riches, but fate had decreed otherwise, and instead of emeralds we had a weapon.

“Hallas, come on!” The goblin’s voice roused Lucky from his stupefied contemplation of one of the gnomes’ greatest secrets, and he dashed across to the gun: “Is it loaded?”

“It looks as if it is.”

“I’ll just check.… Yes, everything’s in order! Deler, Honeycomb! Give me a hand!”

The three of them started turning the cannon in the direction of the approaching ferry.

“Do you have many more surprises like that up your sleeve, my old friend?” Bass asked rather nervously.

I didn’t answer; my attention was focused entirely on Hallas. He was hastily lighting up his pipe and at the same time giving instructions to Deler and Honeycomb.

“We need a small aiming point offset! An offset! Do you know what an offset is, you dunderhead?”

“I’ll show you later who’s the dunderhead!” panted the dwarf, red-faced from the effort of trying to shift the cannon a few more inches.

“Stop! Everybody get back, let the master get to work.”

“Do you actually know how to work this thing?” Marmot asked anxiously.

“I’m a gnome, and gunpowder flows through our veins!” said Hallas, screwing up one eye as he peered at the ferry.

“Remember, you’ve only got one shot.”

“Don’t put me off, Kli-Kli!” the gnome growled. “Everybody plug your ears.”

I quickly followed his advice. Hallas raised his burning pipe to an opening in the cannon, ran back, stuck his index fingers into his ears, and watched.

A bluish gray haze rose from the barrel.

BOOM!

The cannon was shrouded in a pall of stinking bluish smoke and it jerked backward sharply. There was a whistling sound in the air, and then, at the spot where the ferry was, a column of fire and smoke hissed up into the air, mingled with water, men, horses, planks of wood …

We heard the sound:
Cra-a-ash!

“Bull’s-eye!” the gnome exclaimed. “I hit them! I hit them!”

“Ye-e-es!” Kli-Kli yelled. “How about that?”

All that was left of the ferry and the people on it was rubbish floating on the water.

The count’s men on the opposite bank were also looking at the spot where their friends on the ferry had been just a few moments ago. Then several of the horsemen consulted, and the entire cavalcade turned and galloped rapidly away from the riverbank.

“If I just had another ball,” said Hallas, stroking the side of the cannon affectionately.

“Where are they off to?” asked Lamplighter.

“To look for a ford, where else?” Honeycomb said, and spat.

“There are twenty-eight of them,” said Ell, unstringing his bow.

“Right, so it’s time we were leaving.…”

“They won’t get across here,” said Miralissa, shaking her head as she gazed after the horsemen. “The Iselina is too broad and deep at this point. It’s more than forty leagues to the nearest ford.”

I started wringing out my shirt. The wet clothes clinging to my body felt cold and clammy.

“Honeycomb,” Alistan said with a glance at the smooth, settled surface of the river. “Take command.… You’re the sergeant now.”

How could he be a sergeant, with only six men of the Wild Hearts platoon left?

“Maybe they got out farther downstream?” Honeycomb asked wearily. Like everyone else, the warrior was looking at the water.

“They couldn’t have got out,” Eel said gloomily. “I leapt into the water straight after Harold. Uncle didn’t have enough time, he was right in the middle of the ferry, with the horses. And Arnkh … He was wearing chain mail, and plenty of other metal.… Even if he did jump, he sank like a stone.…”

There was a somber silence. How would we manage now without our staid, gray-haired Uncle and the man from the Borderland, with his gleaming bald patch? We couldn’t believe they were gone.

“May they dwell in the light,” Deler said in a dull voice, taking off his hat.

Kli-Kli was sniffing and rubbing his eyes, trying to hide his tears.

We left an hour later, after the Wild Hearts had held the rites for their fallen comrades and Hallas had buried the cannon. The gnome had insisted, saying that his people’s greatest secret must not fall into alien hands.

We were all feeling gloomy and depressed, which is hardly surprising. We set out, moving away from the Iselina, which would always be the Black River for us.

11

THE SOULLESS ONE

All the following week we drove our horses hard to the southeast, moving ever closer to the Borderland, the area adjoining the Border Kingdom and Zagraba.

An undulating, hilly plain extended for tens of leagues around us, crisscrossed with narrow rivers, loud-running brooks, and sparse mixed forest. There were not many villages in the area; during the last two days we had only seen one, and we gave it a wide berth, not wishing to make our presence known to the locals.

The earth in these parts was fertile and rich, and the grass reached up for the sun. But there were few people who wished to cross the Iselina and settle this part of the kingdom. Just ahead of us lay the Borderland, and beyond that the eastern forests of Zagraba and the famous Golden Forest, where the orcs lived.

Alistan kept veering more and more to the southeast, avoiding the trading routes running between Valiostr and the Border Kingdom. As I understood it, he was hoping to get us to the border between the two states in a week, and then take our group in a straight line from there to the Forests of Zagraba.

All the packhorses had been killed on the ferry, which had taken our provisions and our armor to the bottom of the river. Hallas and Deler bewailed this loss for a long time, but of course there was nothing to be done. We only had the chain mail that had been on the horses that had crossed on the first trip, and the elves had kept their armor, with the crest of their houses engraved on the chests.

Marmot and Lamplighter had been left without any kind of armor at all, apart from their jackets of stone-washed leather with metal plates sewn onto them. The provisions, spare clothing, and much else besides had been left behind forever at the bottom of the river. But we did not go hungry; there was plenty of game in these parts, and there was always meat roasting on our fire.

On the fourth day after the ill-starred crossing of the Iselina, the weather finally turned bad and the rain came lashing down. It tormented us for seven whole days, and I had to wrap myself in a cloak kindly lent to me by Egrassa.

The continuous rain poured down from the low, gray clouds, and the conditions were always damp, cold, and vile. It was especially hard getting up in the morning and lighting the fire. Our arms and legs were stiff; it felt as if we had been sleeping on snow and not on grass, with a cloak of waterproof drokr to keep off the interminable rain falling from the sky. Kli-Kli caught a cold and he coughed and sniffled all the time. Marmot treated him with herbal concoctions, which made the goblin spit and gag, saying that he’d never tasted anything so bitter in all his life.

The rain just kept pouring down.

The ground turned into a huge lake of mud, and every now and then the horses slipped and stumbled in this mush, threatening to throw their riders to the ground. The dozens of tinkling brooks and little rivers that crisscrossed the terrain all swelled up and overflowed their banks. On low-lying land there was genuine flooding, and sometimes the water was as high as our stirrups, so that we had to search for a long time to find an elevation above the plain where we could make camp for the night.