Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

It was his shadow that gave him away. It was pale and weak, almost hidden by shafts of light, but I could still see it. Midge might have been an experienced warrior, but he hadn’t done a very good job of hiding. The killer had climbed up a set of shelves and hung there, waiting for me to pass by below him.

We both made our move at the same time-I spun round, raising the crossbow, and he jumped down onto my shoulders with his knife.

The bowstring twanged. The first bolt just missed my enemy as he fell onto me and struck one of the thick volumes standing on the top shelf. I had no time to take a second shot. Or even to jump aside. The killer slumped on top of me with all his weight, and the only reason I wasn’t killed was that I managed to strike him across the wrist with the crossbow with all my might. His knife and my weapon went flying off to one side.

I fell onto my back, hitting my head against the stone floor, and showers of bright sparks exploded inside it. The accursed killer landed on me and without a second’s hesitation, not disconcerted in the least by having lost his knife, he smashed his fist into my face.

Bang! One of the gnomes’ powder kegs exploded on my right temple and I gritted my teeth, almost biting through the bolt I was holding between them. Struggling against the pain, I made a highly inelegant effort to kick him, but this pitiful attempt was unsuccessful. Midge swung his fist back and smashed it into me again. I grabbed the crossbow bolt out of my teeth, swung it, and stuck it into my opponent’s shoulder. He roared and slackened his grip a little bit, but then smashed me in the face with his elbow with a furious growl. Unlike his partners, he wasn’t given to idle conversation, and simply wanted to finish the job as quickly as possible so that he could be on his way.

The finale of our epic battle, which was worthy of being recorded in the frescoes in the royal palace, was that Midge’s sinewy hands grabbed the neck of a certain Harold in a crayfish-claw grip and set about choking him in a rather determined fashion by closing off the flow of air to his lungs.

I punched Midge on the ribs with both hands, but that didn’t have any effect, either. He merely tightened his grip like an imperial hound and leaned over me, gritting his teeth. The bolt in his shoulder was no hindrance to him at all.

Someone began wheezing in a most convincing fashion. Then the wheezing began fading away, retreated into the background, and got tangled up in the shadows. When the darkness had completly subdued me, from out of some other world, a beautiful world full of fresh air, I heard the twang of a bowstring, the whistle of an arrow in flight, and a dull thud. Then something very heavy fell on me, finally pinning me to the floor. Amazingly enough it became easier to breathe.

I lay there without opening my eyes, breathing in that priceless gift of the gods-air. Everything inside me was wheezing and whirling and whistling. My neck hurt unbearably, it was even painful to swallow, but I was breathing, and that was the most important thing just at the moment.

“Alive, my lord!” a voice above me said.

“Get him up!” To judge from the angry voice, that was Baron Frago Lanten in person.

Sheer politeness obliged me to part my heavy eyelids and take a look at the new characters in this never-ending comedy. I was right.

The baron, in an unusually dour mood, was standing over me in the company of about two dozen of his faithful dogs. The heavy item that had fallen on me was none other than the dead Midge. They had shot an arrow straight between his shoulder blades, and the hired killer had decided to die right on top of me.

To be quite honest, I must confess that this was the first time in my life I had ever been so glad to see the municipal guard. In my mind I took back all the bad things I’d ever said about their skill and their intellectual capacity, and swore on the health of the leader of the Doralissians that this week I wouldn’t think anything nasty about them even once.

A soldier took a firm grip on me under my arms and set me on my feet. For some reason the floor was swaying about rather vigorously and I had to make a serious effort not to fall. After its recent encounter with Midge’s fist, my face was burning with an appalling heat, as if someone had briefly held a red-hot poker against it.

“Baron Lanten? You have no idea how glad I am to see you here,” I croaked quite sincerely.

My throat was still sore, and I could still feel the other man’s remorseless fingers on my neck.

“I should think so,” one of the guards snorted.

“Harold, you son of a bitch, what in the name of Darkness are you doing here?” Frago barked. I could see that I’d spoiled his mood for an entire month ahead. “What if we hadn’t turned up?”

“Then the story would have ended very sadly for me,” I muttered.

I hate it when people yell at me.

“And not only for you!” Frago went on, still howling. “The king would have had my hide!”

“How did you know you should look for me here?”

“We didn’t know,” snapped the baron, a little calmer now, and sat down on a chair hastily moved up for him by one of his subordinates. Naturally, no one offered me a seat, but I was in no state to be concerned about etiquette and so I took a stool and made myself comfortable facing the baron.

“We didn’t know,” the baron repeated, and glanced at the guards. “Djig, take a stroll.”

“As you say, milord.”

“We were looking for this criminal,” said the baron, jabbing one finger disdainfully toward Midge’s corpse. “A deserter and a traitor. The Wild Hearts were looking for him, too, but we were luckier. A little bird whispered in my ear that this bold lad was in the Royal Library, so we came to catch him while he was available. We weren’t planning on meeting you.”

It was hardly surprising that Frago himself had decided to take part in the hunt and the arrest. Deserters from the Wild Hearts were regarded as the most dangerous of criminals. And it was very lucky for Midge that he’d caught that arrow in his back. If the Wild Hearts had got their hands on him, they would have talked to him in a rather different tone of voice. He wouldn’t have departed this world quite so easily.

“Let me repeat my question. What are you doing here, Harold?”

“I came to look up an old friend. He’s the custodian of this library.”

“And where is your friend, if you would be so kind as to tell me?”

“He’s dead.”

“Tell me about it.”

So I told him. I had to leave out half of the details, of course. I didn’t say a word about the Master and his servants, or the fact that I had seen some of the killers before that night.

“Well, we can say that you have been very lucky, thief,” the baron chuckled when he had heard my story. It was clear that he could barely tolerate my presence. It obviously enraged him.

“We can say that I’ve been very lucky.” I had already recovered my wits a little after what had happened, and now I was impatient for an opportunity to slip out of there and get as far away as possible. “Am I free to go?”

There was nothing more for me to do there-I wouldn’t learn anything from Bolt’s dead body, and the other dead men would be as tight-lipped as… well, as dead men.

“Why, have you business to attend to at such a late hour?” The baron chuckled. “I hope it doesn’t involve entering some innocent rich man’s house?”

“Innocent rich men only exist in fairy tales, milord,” I harrumphed, and got up off the stool, firmly intending to be on my way.

The baron seemed about to order me to sit down and shut up, but then Djig appeared and distracted him.

“Milord, there’s one of our men over there.”