Shadow Prowler (61 page)

“Gaaaarret!” The jester’s shout reached me through the dense jelly of time, and I looked back at the second creature.

“This is the end!” The absurd thought flashed through my head.

I realized I’d hesitated for too long. The creature was approaching very rapidly, and I still hadn’t jumped aside to get out of its way.

“I’ll help,” a painfully familiar voice whispered inside my head.

And then the agony came. Hellish, unbelievable pain. My insides were seared with fire, something boiled and seethed up inside me . . . then it broke out and smashed silently into the creature, tossing me aside at the same time.

A piercing shriek.

The winged creature disintegrated like fog in the face of a hurricane.

The ground came rushing up to meet me.

Click!
And time started speeding up again.

The impact of my landing knocked almost all the air out of my lungs. I was left cross-eyed from pain and wheezing hoarsely as I strained to restore my breathing. On both sides hands grabbed me by the elbows, lifted me up, and tried to set me on my feet, but my legs were too soft, as if I’d drunk too much young wine. Honeycomb swore as he and Loudmouth began dragging me away from the edge of the ravine.

“Valder! You son of a bitch,” I croaked out loud. “You promised to leave me alone!”

Naturally, no one replied. The magician had gone into hiding, and I couldn’t sense him anymore. Only when things had got too hot, had he surfaced out of the depths of my own self and saved my skin.

“Who’s that he’s talking to?” Loudmouth asked warily. “Are you sure that brute didn’t touch him?”

“I’m certain!”

Meanwhile the other nine creatures were circling again, with the clear intention of continuing the attack. The speed of their roundelay continually increased until the creatures fused into a single blurred circle that burst like a soap bubble and they came diving down toward us.

“Curses!” Loudmouth let go of me and pulled out his sword.

With no support, I tumbled to the ground, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of weakness.

Along the entire line of the edge of the ravine the air suddenly trembled and vague shadows began appearing—human silhouettes armed with bows. With every heartbeat they became more clearly defined.

“Do you see that?” Honeycomb whispered, stunned.

I gave a bemused nod, but I don’t think he noticed.

The purple creatures were still falling from the sky. In real time no more than two seconds had gone by, but it seemed like an eternity to us.

A voice rang out above the ravine choked with rain.

“At the enemy! Choose your target! Correction half a finger to the right! Fire, you whores!”

The gray shadows of arrows went soaring up into the sky to meet the death that was diving down at us. With a scream of horror and disappointment, the flyers broke apart, dissolving into the air, and the purple cloud groaned.

“Together, fire!”

I had heard that voice before somewhere a long, long time ago, probably in a former life or, perhaps, in a dream.

We couldn’t hear the twang of the bowstrings or the flight of the arrows. There was only the rain rustling on the ground and the cloud constantly groaning like an expiring ghost. The flight of transparent arrows bit into its belly, leaving behind huge ragged holes.

The loud, lamenting wail of a doomed creature rolled on and on above the earth, farther and farther . . . I put my hands over my ears, the sound was so loud and so terrible. I think they must have heard it even in Djashla.

The phantoms fired a third time and the cloud flared up as bright as the sun, flooding the surrounding region with purple light. In less than a minute I had collapsed from exhaustion and been deafened and blinded. There was nothing left to do except to curl up in a ball and try to emerge from this appalling nightmare.

When I came round, it was all over. There were no more purple storm clouds in the sky, the phantoms had disappeared as if I had simply dreamed them, and even the rain had stopped. The clouds had
disappeared, giving way once again to a clear blue sky. The sun was shining straight into my eyes, but the former suffocating heat had been replaced by warm summer weather.

I tried moving first one arm, then the other, and then tried my legs. I seemed to be alive. Squinting downward, I saw that I was lying on a blanket and someone’s considerate hand had covered me with another one.

“Welcome back,” a voice said above my head, and then Uncle’s bearded, smiling face appeared in my field of view. “So you’re awake now? We were thinking of singing you the funeral song of forgiveness.”

I cleared my throat and tried to sit up. I managed it without any difficulty, which meant that I was already back to normal after the piece of magic that Valder had worked. Once again I tried mentally summoning the archmagician who had swapped the Forbidden Territory for a life inside my head. But as always, it didn’t work. The magician had either hidden himself away and didn’t want to answer or he had simply disappeared.

“How long have I been lying here?” It was evening when those purple flyers attacked us and now, if the gods hadn’t changed all the rules while I was out of it, it was early morning.

“A little while,” said Alistan, walking up to me.

“How long exactly?” I persisted.

“A little over a day.”

Not bad going.

“How are you feeling?” Miralissa had come over with the count and now she put her hand on my forehead. Her skin was dry and her palm was hot.

“I seem to be in good shape. What happened?”

“We should ask you that,” said Alistan. “What happened at the edge of the ravine, thief?”

“I don’t know.” I frowned. “I can’t remember.”

“Well try, Harold.” Markauz’s voice had an ingratiating tone to it and he even forgot to call me thief. “It’s very important.”

The entire group looked at me expectantly.

“First those creatures were flying at us, then Tomcat did something, but it didn’t help, then I saw one of them getting close to me, and then something happened.”

“Something?” Miralissa echoed, raising one eyebrow in surprise. “Do you really not know what happened?”

“I really don’t,” I said without the slightest twinge of conscience.

I genuinely didn’t know what the archmagician had done to kill the flyer and toss me out of its path. So I hardly had to lie at all.

“In the hundredth part of a second someone created an attack spell of such great power that I thought my hair would burst into flames! Only a very experienced magician is capable of doing that.”

Uh-huh. Someone like my friend Valder.

“Well, it definitely wasn’t me who did it.”

“Naturally,” Alistan said coolly. “But we’d like to know who did.”

I shrugged.

“And the phantoms? Who, I mean, what were they?”

“They’re the spirits of the men whose bones lie on this side of the ravine,” I said. “The soldiers of the Dog Swallows Brigade returned to our world when they sensed the shamanic magic at work.”

Miralissa kept her pensive gaze fixed on me. I think she knew perfectly well that I wasn’t telling her everything, but for some reason she didn’t try to shake the truth out of me right there and then.

“What the Nameless One’s shamans created could have awoken the spirits of the fallen.”

“And what happened to that cloud?” I asked.

“It disappeared.”

“And Tomcat?”

Everyone turned their eyes away.

“He’s dead, Harold,” Uncle answered eventually.

“What happened?” Somehow I couldn’t believe in the death of the platoon’s tracker.

“That creature, whatever it was, passed through him and killed him. That’s all we know. Are you fit to sit in the saddle, thief?” asked Alistan.

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ve lost a day and we need to get out onto the highway. Is everything ready, Uncle?”

“Of course, captain,” the sergeant of the Wild Hearts said with a nod.

“Get up, Harold, we need to see a soldier off on his last journey.”

They had buried Tomcat before I came round. He had found his final resting place under a young rowan tree with silvery bark and branches
that spread out above the large gravestone. On the stone someone had traced the words
TOMCAT. BROTHER OF THE WILD HEARTS.?–1123 E.D.

“Good-bye,” Uncle said for all of us.

“Sleep well,” Miralissa whispered, passing her hand above the grave.

Kli-Kli was blinking rapidly, trying to hold back the tears. Arnkh was clenching and unclenching his fists helplessly. Deler and Hallas looked like twins now—both small, sullen, and somber.

And then Lamplighter launched into the song “Forgiveness.” The song that the Wild Hearts sing over the bodies of their brothers, no matter whether they fell in battle or died of old age. It’s a strange song, not really suitable for warriors. After all, how can warriors forgive their enemies?

But this song was as old as the Wild Hearts and the Lonely Giant, and it had been sung since such hoary old times that now no one knew who first sang it to see warriors off on their final journey.

Kli-Kli and Alistan and Miralissa and the elves and I listened to this strange song that semed so incongruous for soldiers, and yet wrung the heart in such bitter enchantment. After the first couplet all the Wild Hearts joined in.

When the song came to an end, only the chirping of the crickets disturbed the silence of the morning. No one said a word; no one wanted to be the first to break the silence of mourning.

Our group had lost a comrade. But would he be the last? No one knew who or what was waiting for us up ahead. We still had so many obstacles to overcome in order to reach the Forests of Zagraba, where the burial chambers of Hrad Spein lay concealed.

“That’s it.” Uncle’s voice sounded like flintpaper. “Time to go.”

“Have a good winter, Tomcat.”

Kli-Kli turned away, trying to conceal his tears. I had a bitter feeling in my heart. As well as the pain of loss we all felt a violent, seething anger. If the creators of that cloud had been there then, I swear I would have torn them limb from limb with my bare hands.

The group rode almost all day long without talking. Hallas and Deler stopped arguing, there were none of those interminable little songs from Lamplighter’s reed pipe, Kli-Kli forgot about his jokes and sniffed occasionally, with his eyes noticeably redder than usual. Marmot frowned
dourly and stroked Invincible, who was frozen as still as a statue on his shoulder.

I rode apart from everyone else, immediately behind Uncle and Honeycomb. I was in a foul mood and didn’t feel like talking to anyone. My solitude was only interrupted once, when Alistan rode up to me.

Somehow he appeared out of nowhere on my right and we rode together for several leagues. I didn’t object to his silent company and was actually a little surprised when he broke the silence.

“You know, Harold, Tomcat’s lying in a good place.”

“Is he?” That was all that I could force out to express my surprise at his words.

“Beside the grave of heroes. He has good neighbors.”

“For him, yes,” I replied after a moment’s pause. “But who will remember him in ten years’ time? A grave in a wilderness. Perhaps one cowherd a year ever finds his way to that spot.”

“You’re wrong, thief, he’ll be remembered in the force,” said Uncle, who had heard our conversation. “Beside the slopes of Mount Despair, not far from the Lonely Giant, there’s a graveyard. That’s where all the warriors of the force rest, it doesn’t matter if their bodies are in the graves or were left behind forever out in the snowy tundra. Tomcat will be remembered.”

For the rest of the day we didn’t exchange a single word.

After all the rain that had poured down on the earth, the unbearable heat seemed to have receded. In the days that followed we traveled in relatively warm and very pleasant weather. The meadows of luscious green grass and impassable thickets of bushes were left behind and the open wilderness was replaced by sparse pine forest.

The mood of the group was gradually restored. Tomcat’s death was not forgotten, it was just that the problems of the day pushed it into the background.

Conversations sprang up, first on one side, then on the other. Deler and Hallas started bickering again because they couldn’t agree on whether they’d seen poisonous toadstools or edible mushrooms growing in the little meadow where we spent the night before. Out of the kindness of his heart, Kli-Kli got Ell up in the morning with the help of Deler’s hat, which was full of water. For this escapade the
goblin very nearly caught it in the neck from the elf and the dwarf, but he managed to hide behind me in time, lamenting that no one appreciated his talent.

Several times during the journey I caught Miralissa’s thoughtful gaze on me, but she didn’t ask me anything, evidently waiting until we would be alone together. So I took pains to avoid her company.

Without knowing why, I didn’t want to tell anyone about Valder and the help he had given me.