Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

He walked away, muttering quietly.

Well, what the Wild Heart had said made sense. I lay down on my improvised bed, and immediately leapt back up, trying not to shout out. Some swine had put a briar in my blanket! I cast an angry glance at the jester, but he was sleeping calmly. Or at least pretending with consummate skill.

No point expecting a leopard to change his spots. I stopped worrying, threw the briar as far away as possible, and lay down. And at that very moment I almost choked on my own laughter. Someone had come off even worse than me, only he didn’t realize it yet. Loudmouth was still sleeping with his mouth wide open, and there was a dandelion stalk sticking out of it.

The last thing I saw before I fell asleep again was Miralissa, a solitary figure sitting beside the fire, drawing incomprehensible signs on the ground. I wanted to go to her, but knew I could never follow this road where it might lead… even if she let me. She is what she is-an elfess and a royal one, no less, and a magic user. Harold is what he is-wolf-single, thank you, and planning to stay in that happy state. We were comrades, no more. That was fine with me.

Guess who was to blame for the general tumult and commotion the next morning? Why, Kli-Kli, of course. Miralissa caught the goblin just as he was writing “eensy weensy spider” in the ashes beside the elfess’s magical signs. Naturally, she almost tore his hands off for his artistic efforts. And so all morning the goblin tried to keep as far away from her as possible.

“Harold!” he whined guiltily, not having found any more willing listener in our little party. “I really didn’t mean anything by it! I thought they were just scrawly scribbles and that was all! Please talk to her for me. She’s very mad at me.”

“I think you should talk to her yourself. I don’t have any influence with her.”

“You do. You have the most influence on her royal elfess majesty.”

“Oh, really? The elf princess listens to the thief? The madhouse is just down the road, they’re expecting you.”

“Harold, she doesn’t think of you as a thief, she thinks of you as a Dancer.”

I looked at him blankly for a moment, then shook my head. A Dancer.

Eel was already in the saddle, waiting for the count.

“We’re setting off now. Follow this road and do not turn off anywhere. We’ll try to catch up with you by evening.”

“If we do not meet along the way, look for us in Ranneng, at the inn called the Learned Owl,” Miralissa told them in farewell.

Alistan nodded, then he and Eel dug their heels into the sides of their steeds and went galloping back to the place where Egrassa and Tomcat ought to be.

“Come on, men,” Uncle said with a clap of his hands. “Mount up.”

That day was the hottest of our journey so far. The sun was so pitilessly fierce that even the stalwart and obstinate Arnkh removed his chain mail. Honeycomb stripped completely down to the waist, exposing his bulging muscles, with their abundant display of scars and tattoos. Many others followed his example. Kli-Kli borrowed some rag from Marmot and tied it round his head, after first moistening it with water from a flask.

The road set our backs to the hot sun and wound between open fields and thickets of low, scrubby bushes. There were no clouds and the azure blue of the sky was so painfully bright in our eyes that we had to squint all the time. Apart from the imperturbable elves, the entire party looked like a herd of cockeyed, delirious Doralissians.

The syrupy, incandescent air flowed into my lungs in a clammy, scorching wave. I would have given half my life if only it would rain.

After about two hours of uninterrupted galloping under the unblinking eye of the intense sun, the broad fields fell away behind us and fused into the horizon, giving way to a hilly area with a generous scattering of low pine trees. Instead of the smell of wild grasses and flowers, the constant buzzing of insects and chirping of crickets, we caught the sharp scent of pine resin and heard the serene, impassive silence of the forest.

The road wound between the low hills, sometimes climbing up onto one of them and then immediately, without pausing, diving downward again. Smooth ascents alternated with equally smooth descents, and the journey continued like that for quite a long time.

The forest along the sides of the road grew thicker and the trunks of the trees crowded closer together, hiding almost all the sky behind their leaves. The low, crooked pines gave up their place in the sun to aspens and birches. All the ground in the forest along the road and on the surrounding hills was covered with bushy undergrowth. Now at last, thanks to the dense wall of trees, we had some blessed coolness-the weakened rays of the sun no longer lashed our shoulders like red-hot whips; everybody heaved a sigh of relief and Arnkh hurried to put his beloved chain mail back on, now that he had the opportunity.

For the next hour we rode in the relative coolness of the welcoming forest.

But our good mood didn’t last for long. How could it? As yet, we still knew nothing about the missing Tomcat and Egrassa, or about Alistan and Eel. What reason did we have for feeling jolly?

And so everyone was tense and taciturn. Lamplighter completely forgot about his beloved reed pipe. Kli-Kli didn’t crack any of his eternal dim-witted jokes, and even Deler and Hallas stopped arguing, which was something absolutely unheard of since the very beginning of our journey. The dwarf glowered and stroked the blade of his enormous poleax; the gnome puffed away on his pipe, exhausting his final reserves of tobacco. Uncle growled and tugged on his beard. Loudmouth snarled good-naturedly.

As soon as the road climbed the next low hill and the wall of the forest no longer blocked the view, one of my companions was certain to look back. But the road was still empty, and we rode on, gradually becoming ever more sullen.

Miralissa and Ell talked about something in low voices and she occasionally chewed on her lips, either in frustration or fury. Waiting is the worst thing of all. I know that from my own experience.

At a place where a stream crossed the road, Miralissa said, “We’ll stop on that hill.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the empty road for perhaps the hundredth time that day. “We’ll make a halt there.”

“Alrighty,” said Uncle, supporting the elfess’s proposal. “We need a rest. It’ll be evening soon, and we’re still riding hard.”

Uncle was right. My back was aching outrageously after galloping for so long. What I really wanted to do was get down off Little Bee, lie on the grass, and have a good stretch.

“Harold,” said Lamplighter, riding up and distracting me from my daydreams, “do you think Milord Alistan will manage to catch up with us?”

“I don’t know, Mumr,” I replied wearily. “It’s not evening yet.”

“I hope Miralissa won’t be foolish enough to send anyone else on these dubious reconnaissance missions.”

I was also hoping very much that the dark elfess’s sense of reason was in good working order. If anyone else left the party, our numbers would be reduced to a laughable level. Our group needed to stay together for as long as possible.

The road started running up a hill, and the forest reluctantly slipped downward-the hill was too tall for it, and the time had not yet come for the trees to climb to its summit.

“A halt,” said Loudmouth, jumping down smartly from his horse to the ground.

“I don’t think so,” said Miralissa, shaking her head. “Get back in the saddle.”

I followed her gaze. Up ahead of us, a little more than a league away, there were several columns of thick smoke rising up out of the forest.