Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

“Don’t I recall that just recently you mentioned water in their beds? You didn’t say anything about rats.”

“Well, the rat was a little bit earlier…,” said the jester, embarrassed.

“Never mind, let’s forget it,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me about that pair over there?” I nodded, drawing the goblin’s attention to two soldiers sitting apart from the others and sipping wine from a bottle.

“The rotten swine,” Kli-Kli muttered, ignoring my question. “That’s my wine!”

“Then why have they got it?”

“A trophy of war,” the goblin muttered.

“What?” I asked, surprised by his answer.

“I stuck a nail in that swine’s boot for a joke. But they got angry about it-”

“Naturally, I would have got angry, too, and torn your green head off.”

“They tried to do that, too.” The goblin bit off another piece of carrot. “But all they could get was the bottle. Eh, Harold! If you only know how much effort it cost me to steal it from the king’s wine cellar!”

“You’re the king’s jester. Couldn’t you have just taken it?”

“Pah! How boring you are!” Kli-Kli shook his head in disappointment, setting his little bells jingling in lively fashion. “I can take it, but it’s much more interesting to steal it.”

I didn’t try to argue with him.

“An amusing pair, don’t you think?” he asked, and showed his tongue to the soldier who was holding the bottle.

Amusing? That was putting it mildly! They were amazing! I never thought I would ever see a gnome peacefully sipping a bottle of highly expensive wine with his eternal enemy-a dwarf. The powerfully built dwarf, who could bend horseshoes with his bare hands, and his smaller, narrow-shouldered cousin with a beard, obviously had no intention of going for each other’s throats.

It looked to me as if the lads had already taken a drop too much. Which was strange-one bottle wasn’t usually enough for that with these races.

“Kli-Kli, are you sure that the trophy of war is only one bottle?” I asked the miserable goblin slyly.

“Of course it’s only one,” the jester said, and spat. “They swiped a whole crate from me, but that’s the last bottle.”

That certainly seemed closer to the truth. Even a gnome and a dwarf could easily get tipsy on a crate of wine.

“The ginger one’s called Deler,” Kli-Kli said with another sigh. “In the language of the dwarves that means ‘fire.’ And his friend who stepped on the nail goes by the name of Hallas. In their language that means ‘lucky.’ That one there,” said Kli-Kli, pointing to a man beside a bed of roses, who was practicing with two swords, “is called Eel. Never says a word, and he simply takes no notice of my jokes. It’s impossible to get him stirred up.”

Kli-Kli simply couldn’t bear that kind of insult to his profession. My attention was entirely absorbed by the Wild Heart’s practiced, precise movements. They were entrancing: in the hands of the Garrakan-he was definitely a native of Garrak, you can always tell them by their swarthy skin and blue-black hair-the “brother” and the “sister” swords.

Eel flowed from one position into another, his stance changing every second, the blades slicing through the air with terrifying speed, the sister stabbing so rapidly that my gaze could only catch a blurred gleam of silver lightning. A stroke, another stroke, a jab, a sharp move to the left, the brother descends onto the head of an invisible opponent, a swing around his axis and Eel’s arm stretches out to an unnatural length, extended by the sister, to reach a new enemy’s stomach. The Wild Heart takes a step backward, covering himself with the brother against an imaginary slashing blow from the right and then, out of defense, he suddenly strikes with both blades at once. The sister pierces the head of an imaginary opponent in a predatory thrust and the brother strikes a terrible blow lower down, below the shield.

“Beautiful!” the jester said with an admiring whistle.

I entirely agreed with him. Despite the heat of the scorching sun, Eel continued with his training and performed it astonishingly well. He was well muscled and agile, with a red, aristocratic face and a slim beard.

“Harold, take a look at that individual over there, the funny one.”

I couldn’t see anything funny about the soldier the jester pointed to. He looked a bit like Tomcat, but he wasn’t so well fed. An entirely unremarkable face with thin lips and arched eyebrows, pale blue eyes, and a lazy glance that loitered for a moment on me and Kli-Kli.

“So what do you find funny about him?” I asked the jester.

“Not the man, you blockhead!” the jester exclaimed. “By the way, his name’s Marmot. I meant the animal on his shoulder.”

It was only then I looked closer at what I had taken for a tasteless decoration of gray fur on the soldier’s shoulder. It was a small, furry animal, dozing quietly.

“What is it?” I asked, giving the jester a curious glance.

“A ling. From the Desolate Lands. It’s tame. I tried to feed it some carrot a couple of times. It actually scratched me,” the goblin said.

“You were unlucky,” I sympathized.

“I was really lucky,” Kli-Kli disagreed. “If Marmot had caught me when I was feeding his little animal rotten carrots, he wouldn’t have given me a pat on the head. I swear he would have flattened me!”

At this point I couldn’t restrain myself any longer and burst into laughter.

“Now I understand why you’ve decided not to go with me, Kli-Kli! Almost everyone who’s traveling has a grudge against you. They’d throw you into the first ditch at the edge of the road!”

“Nothing of the sort,” the goblin protested with a sniff. “It’s Artsivus and Alistan. They don’t want to let me go.”

Kli-Kli shook his fist at the sky in annoyance.

“Hey, Marmot, don’t happen to feel like going to the kitchen, do you?” the Wild Heart who hadn’t spoken so far asked his friend stretched out on the grass.

Judging from the chain mail and the lack of hair on his head, the soldier was a native of the Border Kingdom. Only they would be prepared to burden themselves with metal even in this blazing sun. The man from the Borderland had just stopped sharpening his sword, and now he was looking for something to do.

“What for? What is there I haven’t seen in the kitchen?” Marmot asked in a lazy voice.

“You can feed Invincible; he’ll die from hunger soon. He doesn’t do anything but sleep and sleep.”

“He sleeps because it’s hot, but let’s go to the kitchen anyway, I know what you’re after.”

“We all know that,” Tomcat put in, getting up off the grass. “The cooks are really tasty!”

Honeycomb and Uncle started laughing merrily and the Wild Heart who had suggested the walk joined in the laughter.

“Well, are we going then?” asked the Borderman.

“That’s Arnkh,” said Kli-Kli, introducing the man to me. “It means ‘scar’ in orcish.”

“He doesn’t look like an orc.”

“He’s a man, blockhead! It’s just a nickname.”

There was the thin white line of a scar running across Arnkh’s forehead.

“Listen, Kli-Kli,” I said impatiently. “The lieutenant brought me here and told me to wait until someone came to get me. How long do I have to wait? I’m about ready to melt in this heat.”

“I came to get you,” the jester giggled.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“Hang on, Harold, what’s the hurry? The king’s lecturing his subjects, giving them what for, and they’re all silent, pale, and sweaty. Why would you want to be there? Look over that way; I still haven’t told you about the last Wild Heart.”