Алексей Пехов - Shadow Chaser

They started cutting through the rope holding up the two women and taking down the seven bodies off the wall.

“I don’t like the smell of this place,” Kli-Kli groaned.

“I don’t either, Kli-Kli.”

“The ears have been cut off all the heads,” said Eel, examining the corpses dispassionately.

“The Grun Ear-Cutters,” one of the soldiers told us. “This is their work.”

“Ear-Cutters?” Hallas repeated, raising one eyebrow.

“Punitive detachments. They like to collect ears.”

“I see.”

“Fer, tell me, could anyone have been left alive?” Alistan Markauz asked the commander of the column.

“I doubt it,” the Border Kingdom warrior said somberly, watching his men carefully setting down the dead bodies removed from the wall. “Hasal, how long ago did this happen?”

“Yesterday evening, commander. The ash from the fire is barely smoking, the blood has all congealed.”

“We need to get to Cuckoo as soon as possible; we can still overtake the Firstborn and have our revenge.”

“We need to check the rest of the village; the orcs could still be here,” Miralissa said with a shake of her head.

“Why, Tresh Miralissa? What would they be doing here?”

“Who can understand the Firstborn, Fer? Farther on the street divides, which way do you intend to lead the detachment?”

“One-Eye, you’re from here, aren’t you?” Fer asked a soldier with a black bandage over his left eye.

“Yes.” The lad’s face was greener than a leaf in spring. “My aunt, my sisters … Everyone…”

“Pull yourself together, soldier! Where do these two streets lead?”

“They run separately to the end of the village, commander. The rich people lived farther on, and the orchards start there…”

“I’m thinking of dividing the detachment into equal halves, Milord Alistan. We need to explore both streets. What if there is someone from the village still alive, after all?”

“Dividing up your forces may not be wise.”

“But even so, I think it’s the best way.”

“Act as you think best, you are in command here.”

“Grunt, Mouth, take your platoons down the street on the left. Eagle, Torch, you come with me.”

“Yes, commander.”

“Ell, Honeycomb, Hallas, Eel, Harold, Kli-Kli, go with Grunt,” Alistan Markauz ordered. “Lady Miralissa, Egrassa, Marmot, Lamplighter, and I will follow Fer’s detachment.”

“Is it a good idea to split us up, milord?” Deler asked peevishly, testing the keenness of his battle-ax blade with his thumb.

“We can’t weaken one of the detachments. They might need our help.”

“Let’s move,” Fer commanded. “Mouth, we’ll meet at the end of the village.”

“Yes, commander.”

“If anything happens, blow your horns,” the knight said, and started his horse.

“Mind your beard, Beard-Face!” Deler boomed to Hallas.

“You worry about yourself,” the gnome replied good-naturedly, adjusting his grip on the handle of his mattock.

We moved into the street, following the two platoons of Fer’s somber and wary soldiers.

“Crud, Brute,” the sergeant said to two twin brothers, “go in front, thirty paces ahead, where I can see your backsides. Keep your eyes peeled. If you see anything, come straight back.”

The two soldiers moved ahead on their horses, trying to spot enemies.

Ell also urged his horse on and rode alongside the sergeant, holding an arrow in the string of his bow.

“I reckon this is stupid,” Hallas grumbled. “Why would the orcs wait about for us to come and tickle their bellies?”

“The Firstborn are capable of any filthy trick, master gnome,” said one of the soldiers. “And the Grun Ear-Cutters are the worst of all.”

“Harold, Kli-Kli, stay behind me. If anything happens, I’ll take them on,” said Hallas.

“You’re our little defender,” Kli-Kli giggled, but he followed the gnome’s advice and held Featherlight back a little.

The two scouts moved along slowly in front of us, but the street was calm and quiet.

The neat little houses with shutters and doors painted blue and yellow looked ominous, as if there was some threat lurking in them. The street widened out and the houses and fences painted blue and yellow became larger. The gates of a house where there were sunflowers growing in the garden had been knocked down and were lying on the ground. Somebody had used an ax to good effect here. There was a human body, bristling with arrows, lying on the porch. Like all the corpses in the village, it had no head. I looked away—I’d seen enough dead bodies for one day.

The houses on the left of the road came to an end and the orchards began. The thick bushes along the road oozed menace—an entire army of orcs could be hiding in there, and archers could easily be concealed in the branches of the apple trees, with their dense greenery. The soldiers kept a careful eye on the hedges, but the only movement was a startled wagtail that fluttered up off a branch and flew away behind the trees.

We had almost reached the end of Crossroads—three houses on the right, a small field, and then a forest of fir trees. On the left there was a field of cabbage, and Kli-Kli remarked that it would be a good idea to pinch a couple of cabbages for supper, the peasants wouldn’t have any use for them now. The goblin hinted clumsily that I ought to steal the cabbages, but after what I had seen in the square, my appetite had been completely destroyed, and I told the goblin so without mincing my words.

Disaster came when no one was expecting it. The immense gates of the last two houses suddenly collapsed and arrows came flying out through the dust raised when they hit the ground.

Screams of pain, the rustling of swords being drawn, the whinnying of horses.

“Orcs!”

“Firstborn!”

“To arms!”

“Sound the horn!”

A war horn sounded and then immediately fell silent when an arrow hit the soldier blowing it in the throat. He dropped the horn and fell under the hooves of his horse. Another horn sounded, and from somewhere behind the houses we heard the clash of weapons. We couldn’t expect any help; the other detachment had fallen into a trap, too.

“Some thieves we are!” the jester shouted, gazing at me with eyes wide in horror.

My memory of what happened after that is not very clear, and yet only too clear at the same time. I was myself, but I could see myself from the outside at the same time, as if watching what was happening around me. The entire battle is etched in my memory forever—it was like something happening in a nightmare, in a dream that is frozen in the frost, carved with an ax on separate blocks of ice.

Bowstrings twanged again and the orcs drew their yataghans and threw themselves on us. They attacked in silence, and that was probably the most terrifying thing that happened to me that day. They say fear has big eyes—in those first seconds it seemed to me that there were a lot of enemies, far more than there were of us.

We were at the very end of the detachment, and so the brunt of the first and most terrible onslaught was borne by the soldiers of the Border Kingdom … and Ell. I saw an arrow lodge in the eye slit of his helmet, I saw the elf leaning back, tumbling over …

The small number of men with crossbows started firing, and a few orcs fell, but the others came at us in silence.

The Borderlanders met the orcs with steel, repulsing the attack with swords and lances. The raucous din that filled the air was indescribable—oaths and screams, the clash of weapons, groans. The orcs were not deterred at all by the fact that their opponents were on horseback. One of them hurled himself at me. I fired and missed, then fired again and the ice bolt hit the Firstborn’s shield, releasing its magic with a ringing sound and transforming my enemy into a statue of ice.