Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

Some of the Wild Hearts were already having breakfast in the large hall of the tavern. They said good morning and asked politely how I had slept. I replied politely that I had slept well, but I didn’t really fool either myself or them.

“Harold, where are you going? It’ll all get cold!” Hallas exclaimed in surprise, clutching a lump of fatty bacon in one hand and piece of smoked sausage in the other. The gnome seemed to be having some difficulty in deciding what to start his meal with.

“I’ll just be a moment,” I told him, and dashed outside.

Arnkh, Tomcat, and Loudmouth were absorbed in watching an original competition between Eel and a certain little individual whom I knew only too well. And to the innkeeper’s considerable dismay, this competition consisted of trying to shoot as many as possible of the chickens running around the yard in the shortest possible time. There were already about fifteen motionless bundles of feathers, little chicken corpses, lying here and there on the sand.

Eel was shooting with a sklot taken from Markauz. Kli-Kli-yes, it was him all right, I would have known that face with my eyes closed now-was felling the chickens with my crossbow.

“Having fun?” I asked the goblin.

“Good morning, Harold,” Kli-Kli replied, and brought down another unfortunate bird with a well-aimed shot. “Ten-six. I win!”

That was addressed to Eel, who nodded in agreement without even trying to argue.

“Thanks for letting me use your crossbow,” said the jester, handing the weapon back to me.

“I don’t recall giving you permission.”

“Oh, don’t be so finicky,” the goblin said with a frown. “I galloped all night and scraped my backside raw before I caught up with you! I have to relax a bit somehow.”

“And why, if I may ask, have you come?”

“Am I imagining it, or did I hear a note of irritation in your voice?” the jester asked, looking me straight in the eye. “I came to pass on a certain item to Miralissa, something the king didn’t have yet when you left.”

“So it’s due to your good services that we’re in no hurry to go anywhere?” the taciturn Garrakan asked gruffly.

“And basically,” said the goblin, brushing aside all possible objections, “I’m going to join you for the rest of the journey.”

“As our jester? Well, how about that!” snorted Loudmouth.

He and Tomcat had come across to us while Arnkh was pulling the bolts out of the birds’ little corpses and sorting things out with the aggrieved owner of the Golden Chicken.

“Do you see any cap?” Kli-Kli asked, jabbing a finger at his own head.

The goblin was not wearing a jester’s cap with little bells, or a leotard. He was dressed in ordinary traveling clothes with a cloak on his shoulders.

“I’m going with you as a guide, not a jester. The place we’re going to is my homeland. And I’m just as much at home there as the elves are. I also happen to be the king’s authorized representative.”

“If I were in the king’s place, I wouldn’t authorize you to guard my chamber pot!” said Loudmouth.

“Why, you’ve never had a chamber pot in your life,” Tomcat said, laughing at Loudmouth.

“Whether I have or I haven’t makes no difference!” Loudmouth retorted to his colleague with the mustache, and then scratched his long nose. “I’m sorry, goblin, but guarding one more civilian in these difficult conditions is just too much. Especially since we know the kind of dirty tricks you like to play on us.”

“My name’s Kli-Kli, not goblin, Mr. Griper-and-Grouser,” the jester snapped. “And I don’t need protection from anyone. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”

And with that he flung aside the flaps of his cloak to allow us to see a belt with four heavy throwing knives hanging on it-two on the right and two on the left.

Nothing important happened for the next few days. We carried on heading south, stopping for the night in the fields round about.

The nights were warm and nobody suffered at all from the vagaries of the weather. If it had been the usual kind, that is, the same as it had always been in July for the last ten thousand years, we would all have felt a bit chilly at night. But as it was, you could quite happily sleep on the grass, or lie there looking up at the starry sky. If not for the mosquitoes, who had gone absolutely crazy in this unexpected warmth, life would have been splendid.

The reason we had spent the night in the fields was simple. For two days now the highway had avoided all the villages as it looped elegantly round to the southeast. We would only reach the next village on the road in the evening of the next day. Amazingly enough, out in the open air Mumr didn’t snore. Marmot told me that Lamplighter only performed his raucous concerts when he had a roof over his head. So by now I had completely caught up on my sleep.

Little Bee and I had gradually grown accustomed to each other and, to my great delight, I discovered I didn’t feel any fatigue even after an entire day’s riding. No, that’s a lie. I did feel some fatigue, but it was by no means fatal. Not the sort of fatigue that makes you want to collapse on the ground and lie there for four years and not get up again for all the jewels in the kingdom.

At first Markauz didn’t want to take the jester with him, but the goblin, with a perfectly innocent expression on his roguish face, handed the count a paper with the king’s seal on it, and then there was nothing the stern warrior could do but allow Kli-Kli to travel on with us.

The jester’s horse was every bit as large as Alistan’s mount, and while the undersized Hallas and Deler looked-how shall I say it?-rather amusing on horses, the goblin looked simply comical on the huge black monster that had been dubbed Featherlight. Kli-Kli’s feet didn’t even reach the stirrups. But I must say that Kli-Kli felt perfectly confident in the saddle, and Featherlight responded to all his master’s commands at the first asking.

The jester was incredibly quiet. By “quiet” I mean that when you woke up in the morning, there was no need to be afraid of a snake in your boot or a briar in your horse’s tail. But the little goblin creep spent all day long dashing from the head of our unit, stretched out along the road, to its tail, and then back again from its tail to its head. Kli-Kli had time to get everywhere. In the course of the day he could be seen singing songs with Deler and Hallas, telling one of his stories to Tomcat and Eel, conducting an abstruse discussion with the elves, or arguing with the unyielding Alistan Markauz until his throat turned hoarse.

On the third day after Kli-Kli’s arrival we came into a town. And that’s when disaster struck.

The tavern in this little village was a lot worse than in Sunflowers. But there was no choice. And after the nights under the open sky I was glad to accept any bed.

The villagers cast curious glances at us-it wasn’t every day that they saw so many new people and nonpeople. The elves and the goblin provoked the most oohs and aahs, but the other races were only rare visitors to the lands of Valiostr, so the locals felt that they had to drop everything else and come running to gape at these freaks from the world outside. When would they ever get another chance?

The master of the nameless inn was simply overwhelmed by this great influx of guests and stood there on the porch with his mouth hanging open. Fortunately for us, the innkeeper’s burly wife jabbed her husband under the ribs with her elbow and set him and his two drowsy daughters, who had already attracted an extremely interested glance from Arnkh, about their work. Naturally, despite their mother’s prods and pokes, the drowsy daughters were still moving slowly and lackadaisically, until the ling suddenly took matters into its own hands by leaping from Marmot’s shoulder onto one girl’s head, and there was Kli-Kli, who had arranged the whole scene, to shout: