Алексей Пехов - Shadow Chaser

I looked back—our pursuers were seriously outpaced by the insane speed of our wagon, but they were still rushing after us, as stubborn as imperial dogs that have scented their prey.

“Let’s jump for it!” I yelled.

The wagon was moving at an incredible pace, and if we were foolish enough to stay in it, we would end up smeared across the wall.

“If we jump, we could hurt ourselves!” Kli-Kli objected.

“If we don’t jump, we’re certainly going to hurt ourselves! Jump on two!”

“One…”

It was too late. The wagon caught up with the wall, or the wall caught up with the wagon, I don’t know which.

We slammed into it.

The impact was appalling. Kli-Kli, who was balancing on the side of the cart like a tightrope walker, waiting for me to say “two,” was thrown off into the air. He was lucky—unlike the jester, Eel and I were inside the cart.

When we hit, the world went dark. I thought a couple of rabid giants had come running down from the Desolate Lands, especially to dance the djanga on my ribs. I still don’t know how my ribs weren’t smashed. My ears were ringing, there were stars in my eyes, my left side was a solid mass of pain, and my head felt like it was made of lead.

I don’t know how long I lay there like that. Maybe it was a second, maybe an entire age. The stars stubbornly refused to disappear and their crazy spinning was beginning to make me feel sick. And even worse, after the blow I could hardly even think, and only in short bursts.

After that it was like I saw everything that happened from the outside.

Kli-Kli was leaning down over me. The goblin looked completely unhurt, apart from a graze on his cheek and a tear in his cloak.

“Harold! Come on, Harold! Darkness take you! Get up! Get up!”

Why was he shouting like that? I’m not deaf. And where have all these planks come from? Ah yes! The cart!

“Get up, Dancer in the Shadows! They’re almost here!”

May a h’san’kor eat his tongue! What is this jester pestering me about now? All I need is to lie down for half an hour, and I’ll be as good as new. Let him go and pester Eel instead. Yes, I wonder how he’s getting on.

I had to make a real effort to look away from Kli-Kli, who was trying to tell me something, and turn my head toward the spot where I thought the warrior must be.

Aha! Eel was there beside me, only an arm’s length away. His face was covered with blood and he was leaning on the sword he had captured, trying to get up from his knees. I admired the Wild Heart more than ever. Our Eel was a stubborn lad, all right.

“Run, Kli-Kli! Warn them!” the warrior hissed.

Run? Who from? And warn who? When he heard the warrior’s order, Kli-Kli’s face clouded over in fright.

“I’m not going to leave you!”

“Go on, jester,” I said. My voice certainly didn’t sound any better than Eel’s. “Warn everyone who needs to know and we’ll have a glass of carrot juice together.…”

My throat was so dry, I could have drunk the entire Cold Sea dry, even though it is so salty.

“Try to stay alive, Dancer!” Kli-Kli gave me one last glance and disappeared from my field of view.

“Where has he gone to? Ah, yes, of course. He’s gone running off somewhere to warn someone. He moved so fast, he must really want that juice. Well, good luck to him. And all the best…”

The Garrakian wasn’t allowed to get to his feet. Some men surrounded him, knocked the sword out of his hands, and hit him on the back of his head. Eel fell down onto the ground and stopped moving. I tried to get up, but my arms and legs wouldn’t obey me and I closed my eyes to let these bad men know I was too well brought up to talk with people like them.

A thousand devils of darkness! We smashed into a house that was standing in the wrong place! Why couldn’t it have gotten out of the way? Darkness! That wasn’t what I should be thinking about.

“Is this one alive?” asked someone standing over me.

“Aha! But he’s out cold,” someone else said, and gave me a kick under the ribs.

I knew they were bad men.

“You halfwit. You let the shortass get away.”

“Well, how much trouble can a goblin cause?”

“He can cause us a whole wagonload.”

“Shall I send the lads after him?”

“Ha! Now you think about it. There’s no way you can catch him, we’ll never find him in the alleys now. No more talk. Load these two before the guards turn up and a crowd gathers.”

They tossed me onto a hard surface. Someone swore, a door slammed, the floor jerked and creaked. It seemed like I was in a carriage. But why had they dumped me into it like that? The lads could at least have invited me to take a drive with them. I’m so polite and obliging, surely they didn’t think I would refuse to get into the carriage?

I heard someone groan close to my ear. Eel?

I had to open my eyes to satisfy my curiosity. I discovered that I was lying on the floor of a carriage beside the unconscious Eel. The other people in the carriage were the lads with crossbows who five minutes earlier had been trying to shoot down Harold and his companions.

The orcs have a wonderful saying: “Curiosity led the goblin into the maze.” One of the bad lads noticed that I had opened my eyes and exclaimed, “Hey, this one’s come round.”

I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t done anything of the sort, and I had a name, but somehow my tongue wouldn’t obey me.

“Then knock him out again,” someone advised the crossbowman indifferently.

The last thing I saw before I plunged into nothingness was the bludgeon descending on my head.

I walked along a wide, dark corridor with walls of rough-hewn stone, covered with either moss or lichen. There was practically no light at all and I had to keep my hand on the wall in order not to miss a sudden turn.

The ceiling danced up and down like an earthworm trying to fly. Three times I hit the top of my head against it, but then after I took a few more steps I could stretch my hand up as far as I could reach without feeling any obstacle—there was nothing but empty darkness and a slight draft.

A thousand questions came swarming into my mind. How had I gotten here? Where was I walking to? Why? What was I looking for in the darkness of this underground cellar? And was it really a cellar?

That didn’t seem very likely, especially bearing in mind that every twenty-five paces my hand ran into a metal door with a small barred window in it. Twenty paces of crude stone and moss under my fingers, then they felt cold metal, dewed with the underground dampness. And then another twenty paces of stone. It all gave me the impression that I was on the lowest level of some immense prison.

The corridor seemed endless. Sometimes I heard groans and muttering from behind the doors, but mostly all there was behind them was a deafening silence. Who were the inmates of those underground cells? Prisoners, madmen, or the souls of people barred for all eternity from taking the path into the light or the darkness? I had no answer to these questions, and no real desire to find out who was actually in those cells.

As I walked past yet another door, I heard insane, cackling laughter from behind it. It took me by surprise, and I sprang away, recoiling to the opposite wall, and starting to walk faster in order to leave the insane prisoner behind as quickly as possible. But the sound of that laughter came after me along the walls and the ceiling, beating me on the back and forcing me to hurry on my way.

After three eternities, when I had completely lost count of my steps, I thought I caught a faint scent of the sea.