Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

“Quarantine,” Kli-Kli prompted.

“That’s it! Quarantine! They won’t stick their noses out for another three months! You’ve no need to worry about any pursuit.”

“Well, then they’ll report to Ranneng so that we can be intercepted,” Loudmouth persisted.

“Damn it, you stupid man! I said quarantine! They won’t send out a messenger or even a lousy pigeon! Isn’t that right, Lady Miralissa?” asked Arnkh, turning to the elfess to confirm that he was right.

“If there really was copper plague in the village,” she said thoughtfully, keeping her eyes fixed on the sooty smoke rising over the forest.

“But what was it, if not the plague?” asked Marmot, genuinely surprised.

“It could be anything!” Hallas declared. “You can expect anything at all from that Order of theirs. You human beings look the other way and meanwhile the magicians get up to all sorts of dirty business behind your backs. Well, who says I’m wrong?”

The gnome gazed round the group sternly, searching for someone to disagree with his opinion. There were no fools who wanted to get into a fight.

Hallas was right. The Order was always playing with fire. I immediately recalled my dream about the blizzard that had raged in Avendoom after the unsuccessful attempt to destroy the Nameless One with the help of the Horn. That had earned us the Forbidden Territory. And no one knew about the part played in all of that by the Order that everyone loved so much. If we didn’t know about one of the magicians’ little slips, there might be another one we didn’t know about. And the other one might be far more serious. Even if there was plague there, they probably started it themselves. The learned have cast their spell, for their own profit, and too bad for everybody else.

Hallas bent his arm in a gesture known to the whole world since ancient times. The gnome was simply bursting with hate for the Order. I wondered why.

“Forgive me, Lady Miralissa, but this is a sore point with me! The magicians themselves set up the whole thing. I don’t know what happened there, but there was some kind of mess-up, and then they sent a dozen bolts of lightning and a hundred fireballs shooting down from the sky to cover their tracks. Flattened the entire village!”

“How do you know they flattened it? Did you see?” Honeycomb boomed.

“A gnome doesn’t need to see. We work with fire from when we’re kids, and you only get smoke like that if you burn a heap of earth’s bones in the furnaces. That’s magical fire! I can smell it. That’s why they brought the chasseurs here, so they could detain everybody until the magicians finish what they’re doing!”

“All right,” said Loudmouth, interrupting Hallas’s accusations. “Whether there was plague there or something else, we’ll never know now, but in any case, we have to get as far away as possible. We can’t be too careful.”

“But did you see that beast they’d lured in?” Deler asked thoughtfully. “Maybe there are as many hands like that in the village as there are gnomes in the mountain caves!”

“That beast wasn’t theirs; Tresh Miralissa created it!” said Kli-Kli. “By the way, milady, how did you know that we’d need a hand like that?”

“I did not know, inestimable Kli-Kli.” The elfess’s black lips stretched into a venomous smile. “I actually prepared a sleeping spell. They should all have fallen asleep.”

“But then where did that beast come from, Tresh Miralissa?” asked Ell, genuinely surprised.

“Ask our green companion that, my faithful k’lissang. He was the one who drew beside my spell! The credit for the appearance of such a creature must go entirely to Kli-Kli.”

“How was I to know?” the goblin said with a guilty sniff. “I didn’t think you’d written anything special there.”

“You ought to be isolated from society, Kli-Kli.” Deler chuckled good-naturedly.

“Why, you ought to thank me!” the goblin declared indignantly. “If not for that hand, who knows how the whole business would have turned out? I told you my grandfather was a shaman. It’s hereditary!”

“Playing rotten tricks?” asked Marmot. “If you’re a shaman, I’m the leader of the Doralissians!”

“I tell you, I have the blood of the finest goblin shamans running in my veins, including the great Tre-Tre! He’s an ancestor of mine through my mother’s grandmother.”

“That’s enough. Loudmouth is right. We need to get as far away as possible,” said Miralissa, interrupting Kli-Kli.

“Shall we try the forest?” Honeycomb suggested.

“Go round the village? I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Uncle said. “The chasseurs could have traps under every tree, and if we run into them again, they won’t let us go so easily.”

“Do you suggest going back?” asked the elfess, clearly not pleased with this idea. “The ride to the highway is a lot farther than to Ranneng. We would lose a huge amount of time.”

“There is another road,” said Honeycomb. Like me, he had already removed his chain mail, and now he started drawing a simple map in the sand. “This is the highway.” A straight line ran across the sand, looping in its middle like a horseshoe and then straightening out again. “This is Ranneng.”

The line ran straight into the blob that represented the city. From the point at which the highway looped, another line ran down and to the right. It crept farther and farther away from the highway until at one point it started running parallel with it, and then converged with the highway again, meeting it right beside the city.

“There’s an abandoned track here. Or at least, there used to be.”

“You suggest that we ought to take it?”

“Yes, Lady Miralissa. At least it offers us a way out of our situation. The road through Vishki is closed and it is too far to go back.”

“It is decided then,” the elfess agreed. “We will go back to the place where the track starts and await the return of Milord Alistan, otherwise he will ride on and fall into the hands of the magicians.”

“Won’t we lose more time, making our way over the hills?” Lamplighter asked doubtfully.

“No,” said Honeycomb with a shake of his head. “We’ll leave the hills on our left. The area is known as Hargan’s Wasteland. Thin forest, ravines, clumps of heather, and not a single person for twenty leagues in all directions. A desolate area. If our enemies are trying to find us, they’ll have to look very hard.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Loudmouth growled, putting one foot in a stirrup.

It was already late evening; the July sky was gradually turning paler and the sun had almost set. We set out along the road back with the twilight treading on our heels. All of us were in a subdued mood. The men didn’t speak. Hallas puffed on his pipe and swore quietly to himself and Kli-Kli tied knots in a piece of string, threatening to show us all the famous shamanism of the goblins.

It took us a long time to find that almost invisible track in the total darkness. Several times Honeycomb stopped the group, dismounted, and walked along the wall of bushes, thoughtfully scratching the back of his head. Then he climbed back into the saddle and we galloped on, moving farther and farther away from the hills and the unfortunate village of Vishki. The point came when we had to light torches-the moonlight was simply not enough-and Loudmouth immediately started grumbling that now even a blind man could see us.

When Honeycomb dismounted for the tenth time, even the imperturbable Marmot started groaning:

“So where is this track of yours? How long can we carry on prowling about in the dark? Let’s put it off until tomorrow! We’re all tired, and the ling needs to be fed.”