Алексей Пехов - Shadow Chaser

There was something wrong as he walked along the street leading to the field, but Djok couldn’t work out what it was. Then he realized—it was the people! There were far too few of them for the day of the royal tournament! For some reason there were no townsfolk hurrying to take their seats on the benches.

Everybody was discussing something that had happened near the Muddy Gates. Apparently one of the elves had been killed, but Djok didn’t give it a thought, he was completely focused on the victory he was going to win and not concerned about anything else. For the last hour all the bowman had seen in his mind’s eye was the red and white target with the bull’s-eye into which he had to plant at least eight arrows.

Djok walked the final hundred paces to the end of the street and the beginning of the tournament grounds completely alone. Everybody seemed to have vanished into thin air. There was not a soul to be seen, apart from some soldiers of the royal guard standing ahead of him. Djok frowned. Firstly, what were these guardsmen doing here, when usually the municipal guard was used? And secondly, there were far more soldiers than necessary.

There were at least twenty men on foot, half of them with lances and half with crossbows. And ten men on horseback, all in full armor and looking very belligerent. Djok assumed that the knight in white and green armor was in command; at least his armor was the most finely finished.

The men waited in silence as he approached without speaking and no one moved. Djok slowed down and gasped—the tournament flags and the blue and gray royal banner had been lowered to half-mast.

“Has the king died, then?” he muttered in amazement.

That certainly would explain why there had been no one hurrying to the tournament and why the people had looked so worried and frightened.

The guardsmen’s faces were dour and tense. Djok walked up to the men who were blocking his path and turned to one soldier with whom he had drunk beer a few times: “Tramur, what’s going on?”

“Well, just look, he’s come to us!” the soldier said with a crooked grin, taking a tighter grip on his lance. “Drop that bow, you vermin!”

“What?” said Djok, startled. He glanced at the knight in white and green, but the knight didn’t speak.

Tramur struck Djok in the stomach with the handle of his lance. The young man doubled over in pain and dropped his bow. Tears sprang to his eyes and he was completely winded.

The second blow landed on his neck, and the surface of the road swayed, then leapt up and hit him hard in the face. His mouth filled up with blood, his head was full of swirling fog, he tried to get up and ask why they were beating him, but someone kicked him under the ribs and he collapsed back onto the stones of the road.

They beat him for a long time in silence. He tried to protect his head with his hands and curled up like a baby in its mother’s womb, but he couldn’t get away from the blows, there was nowhere to hide. The blows just kept on showering down. Powerful, painful, desperate.

The archer could no longer taste the blood in his mouth, there was too much of it. The noise in his ears was turning thick and dull, like a muddy swamp. Eventually somebody’s voice roared: “That’s enough! Enough, I say! The elves don’t want a dead man.”

Djok didn’t hear any more after that. He dove into the shelter of oblivion.

He spent the next few days in a foggy daze, waking up in a narrow cell, a genuine stone box, where three men with bored faces, wearing the emblem of the Royal Sandmen, asked him strange, frightening questions.

At first Djok tried to explain, to tell them that he was innocent, but then the beatings started again. Nobody wanted to listen to him.

All the Sandmen wanted was confession, otherwise the dark elves, who were insane with fury, would turn the kingdom into a bloodbath. And then the torture began. He broke down at the third session and confessed to all the outrages that they attributed to him. He no longer cared what happened to him, just as long as they left him in peace for at least a little while.

Djok’s face had been smashed into a bloody pulp, his nose was broken in several places, his fingers had been shattered and his ribs broken and he was covered all over in bruises and cuts. He could barely even move when they tossed him onto the urine-soaked straw in his cell; all he could do was breathe and whine and go to sleep

Sometimes the door of the cell would open and he would have visitors. At those moments he groaned quietly and pitifully, because they started beating him again. Then oblivion returned and for more than a week he was on the brink of death.

But they did not let him die. A magician of the Order helped to bring him back out of the dark.

Djok often had dreams. He was asleep and dreaming, somewhere far, far away from the stone box that some evildoer had had him thrown into. The archer hardly remembered any of his dreams, except for one. …

In this dream a guard came and opened the door of the cell and said with a cheerful smile that he knew Djok was innocent and the crime had been committed by the servants of the Master. The Master was waiting.… After that Djok wept and squirmed about on his straw. And then he fell asleep again.

Afterwards there was a very hasty trial, which he could hardly even remember. Just bright light in his eyes, the pale blobs of lots of faces, and voices talking. They asked him about something and he answered.… One man showed the tall judge his quiver of arrows and then took out an arrow that was broken and covered in dried blood.

“I’m not guilty,” Djok whispered. But no one listened to him and the clerk of the court scraped his pen across his paper. “It was the servants of the Master.…”

The court questioned Lotr, who was red-faced and sweaty, and so frightened that he stammered as he looked around and spoke. Yes, Djok was at my house that day.… Yes, he was upset when he heard that the elfin prince, may he dwell in the light, wanted to take part in the tournament.… Yes, there was something about the look in his eyes.… Why didn’t I notice that immediately, old fool that I am?

And there were other people, too.… Friends, acquaintances, relatives … Yes, he had wanted to win.… Yes, he could have lost to the elf.… Yes, all his life he had been a vain and malicious fellow. Yes, what a terrible disgrace!

Then there was Lia. Yes, Djok had told her he would do anything to win the tournament that day.… He didn’t listen to any more after that, he just kept on whispering one word through his broken lips: “Lia … Lia … Lia.”

It was over very quickly. Everything—his signed confession, his arrow with the blood on it, the testimony from a dozen witnesses—rapidly led the Royal High Court to the only possible conclusion.

When the wooden mallet descended and the old, skinny judge in the black robe and the absurd white wig pronounced the single word, “guilty,” Djok saw the elf who had sat through the whole trial as if he were made of stone look at him and smile. Djok’s trousers were suddenly soaking wet—that smile frightened him far more than all the beatings he had received from men.

They did not execute him, they did something far more terrible than that—they handed him over to the dark elves. An old elf with faded yellow eyes and hair as dry as straw, the same elf who had frightened Djok so badly at the trial, took charge of him in person.