Алексей Пехов - Shadow Chaser

“Wait,” Egrassa answered, mechanically running his finger round the hoop of silver lying in front of him. “Now we’re going to wait.…”

“Wait for what? Is someone hoping that these lads will be stupid enough to give us back the Key, along with a sincere apology?”

“What Tresh Egrassa says makes good sense, Harold. Don’t start getting agitated,” said Uncle, raising his beer mug to his bearded face.

“I’m not getting agitated.”

“Good, there’s no need. Honeycomb went after the thieves.”

“Honeycomb?”

“Who else? We couldn’t wait for you clunkheads,” the sergeant growled. “The elves weren’t here, I’m wounded. Milord Alistan is a knight, not a tracker. You were all gadding around the taverns and getting into fights. Honeycomb was the only one left.”

“Has he been gone long?” asked Marmot.

“Yes, about two hours.…”

“Hallas, enough sitting around,” said Deler, making for the door. “Ell asked us to relieve him; he could still overtake the big bruiser.”

The gnome and the dwarf went out.

“I thought you always carried the Key with you, Lady Miralissa,” said Kli-Kli, interrupting the lingering silence.

This time there was none of the jester’s usual snickering and tittering. Even the resolutely cheerful goblin understood the fix we were in.

“My mistake, jester.”

An elf admitting a mistake! This was something new. They usually accuse other people of making the mistakes.

“No one’s to blame,” Milord Alistan reassured Miralissa. “We had assumed no one would know that we had the Key.”

“We should have assumed differently!” said the elfess, and her eyes flashed. “I was careless and I am to blame! I didn’t even bother to erect a defense round the artifact!”

“How could they even have heard about our arrival?” Egrassa said thoughtfully.

The dark elf seemed to be reading my thoughts. There was only one answer to that question—they had been waiting for us, and waiting for long time.

“Someone reported that we were here,” Alistan replied to the elf. “We were in open view as we rode through the city. There are hundreds of eyes, they could have been watching out for us.…”

Eel strode across the room and leaned down over the bodies of the strangers. He studied the dead men’s faces for a long time and then calmly checked their pockets and their hands. Why their hands?

“They’re soldiers, all right. No doubt about it,” the Garrakian declared.

“We can see for ourselves that they’re soldiers, not priests of the goddess of love,” Uncle snorted. “The question is whose service these scum were in.”

“If they had simply shot us, I would have assumed one of the noble houses had decided to liquidate our group because they thought we’d been hired by their rivals. Then this would have been a warning,” Alistan said after a long pause.

Some warning! A warning is when they break your finger and promise to break your arm the next time, and after that your neck. But when they shoot you full of crossbow bolts, that’s not a warning.

“These dead men were followers of the Nameless One,” said Eel, tossing two rings onto the table. “Look what I found on them.”

I picked up one small circle of metal and turned it over in my hand. A ring in the form of a branch of poison ivy—the crest of the Nameless One. As worn by his servants when carrying out the will of their lord.

“Clear enough.” I put the ring back down on the table and wiped my hands.

When I touched that ring it was probably the first time I had ever felt revulsion for an object made of pure gold. Even if there had been an entire trunk full of the things lying there in front of me, there was no way I would have purloined them. Stalkon was right when he condemned men who serve the Nameless One to be boiled alive.

The sorcerer’s followers are fanatics, putrid filth, vile weeds in the garden of our kingdom, and the king’s Sandmen, the ruthless gardeners, take real pleasure in pulling them up by the roots.

A man I didn’t know came into the room and Miralissa introduced him as the late Master Pito’s nephew.

“What a terrible disaster, Tresh Miralissa! May the gods punish the accursed murderers!” the heir wailed, wringing his hands despairingly.

“They will, Master Quidd, you may be certain of it,” said Miralissa, patting the new owner of the inn on the shoulder to raise his spirits. “I shall make certain that the villain responsible for all this does not go unpunished.”

“Thank you,” said Quidd, nodding gratefully to the elfess.

“Does the guard know what has happened?”

“No, and they won’t find out,” the innkeeper replied. “Those spongers are only good for collecting taxes and taking bribes. But when something like this happens, they’re never anywhere to be found.”

“Then you better have the bodies removed from the hall before someone happens to look into the inn.”

“Yes,” Quidd said with a mournful nod. “Yes indeed, I’ll see to it. I’ll go and fetch my assistants, Tresh Miralissa, we’ll take the dead men to my house and then the women can do what must be done. Prepare them for burial…,” Quidd said in the same sorrowful voice. “But with your permission, I’ll have the two enemies buried at the back of the inn, beside the cattle yard.”

“Just as you wish, Master Quidd.”

Uncle finished his beer and came across to us.

“How’s the shoulder?” Arnkh asked him in a rather guilty voice.

“It’ll heal in no time at all. Thanks to the elfess—she used her shamanism on it. In a week it’ll be as good as new.”

“I feel sorry for Loudmouth,” Kli-Kli sighed.

“Don’t be in such a hurry to bury him, greenface! Maybe he’s still alive,” Marmot told the jester. “The Nameless One’s men wouldn’t have hauled away a dead body, they took him alive, I can feel it in my heart.”

Maybe they did … and maybe they didn’t.… The absence of Loudmouth’s constant nagging and grousing had left a gap in our little band.

The minutes crept by and the drops of time dripped onto the red-hot coals of anticipation, but none of the gods even tried to make them fall faster, to turn the drops into rain and quench the heat of the fire.

Quidd came back with his assistants, loaded the bodies onto stretchers, and carried them out of the inn.

Hallas looked in twice. The first time he reported that all was in order and the second time he took two mugs of beer. When Uncle asked what Deler and he were going to do with booze on watch, the guileless dwarf replied laconically: “Drink it.” The sergeant frowned, but decided not to argue.

Meanwhile Alistan ran a whetstone along the edge of his sword with an imperturbability that persons of the royal blood might have envied. Apparently he wanted to make it the sharpest sword in the universe.

The count’s example proved infectious. Eel took out one of his two blades and set to work. In my opinion, sharpening a Garrakian sword is an unnecessary waste of time. The narrow, elegant “brother” can slice through elfin drokr without the slightest effort, never mind plain ordinary silk.

I asked Uncle where my beloved crossbow and knife were. The sergeant jabbed one finger toward the farthest table, where all our weapons were heaped up.

What’s to be done if I don’t know how to use those yard-long lumps of metal they call swords, poleaxes, and all the rest? A crossbow, now, that’s a different matter altogether—with my miniature friend I could easily hit the target at seventy paces. In any case, the art of using all those sharp things for stabbing and slicing is no business for a decent thief. Where would I go waving a sword about, I ask you? In a fight with the guards? Much better to run for it than wait for some beer-soaked guard to stick a piece of metal in your belly. I wasn’t made for fencing and dueling, although thanks to For and his “secret battles” I have a pretty good understanding of all that.