Shadow Prowler

23. VISHKI

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.

“What is it?” asked Uncle, screwing up his eyes.

“As far as I recall, it’s Vishki, a small village, maybe forty or forty-five households,” Honeycomb replied.

“And what’s there that could burn like that?” asked Deler, reaching for his poleax again without even realizing it.

“Well, it’s definitely not the houses, the smoke’s too black, as if they’re burning coal,” said Hallas, puffing stubbornly on his pipe.

“Get ready, lads! Put your armor on, and we’ll find out what the fire’s eating down there!” Uncle instructed.

“And I’d like to know what swine lit it!” said Lamplighter.

The moment there was something to do apart from the hard riding that the soldiers had grown so sick of during the last few days, they all livened up. Any goal was better than being left in a state of total uncertainty for days on end, not knowing where the enemy was and which foul creature you could feed a yard of steel to in order to improve your own foul mood. I could understand the men perfectly; for soldiers, inactivity is the worst possible torment.

“Harold, do you need a special invitation?” asked the goblin, riding up to me on Featherlight. “Where’s your chain mail?”

“What chain mail?”

“The chain mail we chose for you,” Kli-Kli responded irritably.

“I’m not going to cover myself in metal,” I said rudely.

“You really ought to,” said Marmot, who had already taken his chain mail off the packhorse and was putting it on over his shirt. “Armor, you know, can be quite wonderful for saving your life.”

“Ordinary chain mail won’t save you from a crossbow anyway. A sklot will shoot straight through it.”

“Not everybody has sklots, and the enemy doesn’t just use crossbows. It’ll stop you getting scratched, if nothing else.”

Rip me into a hundred pieces, but I have a prejudice against wearing metal on my body. I’ve been used to managing without armor all my life, and I feel no better in chain mail than some people do in the grave. Cramped and uncomfortable.

“Just look at all the others,” Kli-Kli persisted.

The warriors of the platoon were already dressed up in the armor that had so far been left on the packhorses because of the rather hot weather. But in my view an ordinary fire, even if it was rather big, didn’t merit such precautions.

The elves were sporting dark blue chain mail and steel breastplates with the emblems of their houses engraved on them. Miralissa had the Black Moon and Ell had the Black Rose. He put on the helmet that hid his face and Miralissa threw a chain-mail hood over her head, concealing her thick braid and fringe. Hallas, dressed up in something that looked more like fish scales, was helping Deler button up his steel leg plates. The dwarf set his hat aside and put a flat helmet on his head. It had protruding sections at the front to cover his cheeks and nose.

To avoid being the odd Doralissian out, I had to take my “packaging” out, too. It weighed down uncomfortably on my shoulders and I winced in annoyance. Because I wasn’t used to it, it felt cramped and uncomfortable.

“Ah, stop going on like that. You’ll soon get used to it,” Lamplighter consoled me.

He was wearing armor that consisted of strips of steel fitted closely together. Catching my curious glance, he smiled: “A magnificent thing for anyone who likes swinging a bindenhander from side to side. It doesn’t cramp your movements and your grips.”

Instead of a helmet, Mumr tied a thin strip of cloth round his forehead to prevent his hair from getting into his eyes.

“Are we off?” asked Uncle, looking at the elfess.

“Yes,” she commanded tersely, but then she thought for a moment and added: “You take over command.”

Uncle accepted the suggestion as only natural. Unlike the platoon sergeant, Miralissa didn’t know what his men were capable of.

“Hallas, Deler-to the front! You have the strongest armor, in case…”

Uncle didn’t say any more. Everybody understood in case of what. If disaster struck, the soldiers in the strongest armor might survive a hit from a heavy crossbow bolt and distract the crossbowmen’s attention from their less well-protected comrades.

“Have you forgotten about me, sergeant?” I heard a muffled voice say behind me. “I’m with them.”

I turned round to see who it was. Instead of his old chain mail, Arnkh had put on heavy armor. Plus a helmet that looked like an acorn and completely covered his face, with narrow slits for the eyes. Then there were the leg pieces, shoulder pieces, chain-mail gloves, and the round shield. A real wall of steel.

In fact, almost everybody had a shield, including Lamplighter, Honeycomb, and the elves. My companions were all set for a good fight, and they would be very disappointed if it turned out that the fire in the village was just another ordinary blaze caused by the negligence of some drunken peasant.

This time we didn’t hurry, but moved along slowly, gazing attentively into the undergrowth, anticipating a possible trap. There was already a smell of smoke and soot in the air, and we still had a long way to ride to Vishki. Kli-Kli was pulling faces as if he had a toothache-the smoke was tickling his throat and stinging his eyes. And, by the way, the goblin himself was not wearing any chain mail. Since when has a traveling cloak been considered any kind of protection?

“Kli-Kli, why did you pester me like that and not put anything on yourself?” I hissed, jabbing a finger at the chain mail covering my chest.

“Oh, they don’t have a size to fit me anyway,” the goblin answered casually. “And apart from that, I’m very hard to hit. I’m too small.”

“Quiet there!” Loudmouth hissed in annoyance.

We crossed a wooden bridge over a wide stream, or a little river, whichever you prefer. The water was flowing under it at the speed of an obese snail, and the streambed was overgrown with some kind of swamp grass. A bend and a sudden halt.

“Mother of mine!” Uncle explained with a quiet whistle.

The road was blocked with tree trunks. The straight, neat young pine trees with their branches trimmed off had been placed on top of each other and there were banners waving in the air behind them. The first was gray and blue-the banner of the kingdom-but the sight of the second set the hair on the back of my neck stirring. A yellow field with the black silhouette of an hourglass.

The flag of death. The banner of the most terrible illness that existed in the world of Siala-the copper plague. I also saw thirty soldiers dressed in white jackets and crimson trousers. The Heartless Chasseurs in person. The nose and mouth of every soldier was covered with a bandage.

As soon as they spotted us, the men behind the barricade raised their bows at the ready. And behind our backs pikemen crept out of the trap that we had not even noticed and lined up quickly and busily, like ants, cutting off the road.

“Halt!” a harsh voice shouted. “Keep your hands in sight! Who are you?”

“We come in the name of the king!” Miralissa shouted, and to confirm her words, she waved a paper with the gray-and-blue seal of the royal house of Stalkon.

Even at the distance of thirty yards that separated us from the blockage, the seal was clearly visible. The bows in the soldiers’ hands relaxed a little.

My first fright at the unexpected encounter passed. These were not bandits, and they would listen to us before they sent arrows whistling past our ears. And as for the banner… Who could tell what was going on here? Perhaps the peasants were in revolt. Perhaps they hadn’t been able to find any other banner, so they’d taken this one out, and there wasn’t any plague in the village at all.

“How do I know that royal seal isn’t false?” the same voice called out.

“I’ll draw you a dozen as good as that one!” one of the pikemen standing behind us shouted.

No one was in any hurry to come out to us.

“Then take a look at this!” Uncle barked. “Or do you want me to ride closer?”

Despite his chain mail, the platoon leader had managed to bare his arm up to the elbow. The tattoo on it was clearly visible.

“Or will any of you white-and-crimson lads dare to say that the Wild Hearts don’t serve the Stalkons?”

No one said so. How could they? If the Wild Hearts were traitors, then who could you trust? Nobody even doubted that the tattoo was genuine. As I said earlier, impostors usually had their tattoos removed together with their arm. Or even with their head.

The bows and pikes were lowered, no longer threatening us. But the chasseurs were in no hurry to put their weapons away. They kept hold of them, just in case they might come in handy.

A soldier with a corporal’s badge on his sleeve came out to us.

“You’re a long way from the Lonely Giant,” he said. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Like the rest of them, the corporal had his face hidden behind a bandage.

“Is there plague in the village?” Miralissa asked unhurriedly.

“Yes.”

How could some ordinary piece of rag save you when not even the much-vaunted magic of the Order was any help? There was only one thing that anyone who caught the copper plague could do-try to dig his own grave in the time he had left. In ancient times entire cities had died of this terrible illness. Not just cities-entire countries! It’s enough to recall one of the most terrible epidemics, when the still unified Empire was hit by the plague. Nine out of ten people died. And then half of the survivors died. And the next year half of those who were left followed them.

Nothing had been heard of this curse for a very long time. No one had thought about the plague for more than a hundred and fifty years. And now the old disease had reappeared all of a sudden, out of the blue, in the very heart of Valiostr? There was something fishy going on here.

The plague usually appears on the borders of the kingdom, brought in by refugees from another state, and then spreads like wildfire into the central areas of the country. But on the other hand, it has to appear somewhere first. For instance, if some clever dick digs up the old burial sites…

“Everything is written here,” said Miralissa, holding up the royal charter.

The corporal didn’t even reach out to take the document.

“There is pestilence in the village, milady. We have been forbidden to touch other people’s things in order not to spread the infection through the district. We have also been forbidden to allow anyone either in or out, no matter who they might be. Anyone who disobeys will be executed immediately as a traitor to the king and a propagator of pestilence. I ask you once again: Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“None of your business, you damn chasseur,” Hallas muttered to himself, but fortunately the corporal didn’t hear him.

“We are on a mission for the king,” said Miralissa, with a hint of anger in her voice. “We are on our way to Ranneng. That is all you need to know, corporal. And any hindrance caused to us is regarded as a crime against the crown.”

“There is nothing I can do,” the corporal muttered, caught on the horns of a dilemma.

The problem was clear enough: on one side an order not to allow anyone through and on the other the royal seal. So try to figure out what to do: Let them through and you’ll lose your head; don’t let them through, and you’re in for big trouble anyway.

“I have my commander’s orders,” said the corporal, clutching at his last straw.

“What can supersede a command from the king?” Miralissa insisted, sensing that her opponent’s defenses were cracking.

“A threat to the life and prosperity of the kingdom,” said a voice behind the barrier.

The ranks of soldiers parted and two figures came out to join the corporal. Their faces were concealed by bandages, but they were still easily recognizable as members of the Order. A magician and an enchantress.

“The plague sets all of us on the same level. If the disease escapes from this localized pocket, the country will face catastrophe, Tresh Miralissa.”

“I don’t believe I have had the pleasure,” the elfess said coldly.

“Magicians of the Order of Valiostr, Balshin and Klena,” said the man. “Of course, you did not recognize me in this protective mask, but we have met, Tresh Miralissa, at one of the receptions in his majesty’s palace.”

“Anything is possible,” Miralissa said with an indifferent nod. “What has happened here? Can you tell me, magicians?”

“Do you mind if I take a look?” the enchantress asked, holding out her hand.

As Miralissa coolly handed the document to the woman, I saw her nostrils flaring in fury. The elfin princess was not accustomed to having obstacles put in her way.

“You are free to go, corporal,” Balshin said in a low voice. The chasseur gave a sigh of relief and withdrew to join his men, leaving the magicians of the Order to deal with us.

“Genuine,” said the woman, after making a few passes over the paper.

For a split second the royal document flared up with a pink glow.

“That ought to eliminate any possible infection,” said the enchantress, handing the paper back to Miralissa.

“What is going on here is as follows,” said the magician, not disconcerted in the least by having to throw his head back to look up at the riders on their horses. “Enchantress Klena and I were riding past the village when the first case of infection appeared. That was three days ago-”

“How did the illness come to be here?” Ell interrupted.

Ah, so I wasn’t the only one who was confused about the strange way the pestilence had appeared so dangerously close to Ranneng. Just a few days’ journey from the second-largest city in Valiostr.

“We do not know. That still has to be investigated,” said Klena. “But the symptoms are authentic. We were able to summon a regiment of Heartless Chasseurs quartered in the city. They closed off all the roads and paths to make sure that not a single inhabitant was able to leave the center of infection and spread the plague across the country.”

“And have there been any attempts?” Arnkh boomed from under his helmet.

“There have,” the magician said with a perfunctory nod.

A very perfunctory nod. Nobody asked any more questions, although it was clear to all of us what must have happened to the desperate people who found themselves caught in the trap with the victims of the infection. They had been shot with arrows from a distance, that was what. And it made no damn difference who was trying to break through the chasseurs’ blockade-healthy peasants with pitchforks or women with children. No one blamed the Heartless Chasseurs, though-it was a matter of kill a few dozen now or expose thousands more to danger.

“And what of the chasseurs themselves?” Miralissa asked.

“Securely protected by magic.”

“And since when has magic protected against the Copper Killer?”

“Magic is constantly developing,” Klena declared pompously. “The Order has learned how to prevent the illness from infecting people, but there is no way to help those who have been infected before we can protect them.”

The longer this conversation went on, the less I liked it. There were just too many things in the story the magicians had told us that didn’t fit. And apart from that, they weren’t even telling us half the story. If that kind of protective magic did exist, it was clear enough why the chasseurs were still here, and not running as hard as they could away from the plague spot. But then why had the magicians used their wizardry to protect an entire regiment of soldiers, but not done the same for the villagers at the very start of the epidemic when, according to the magicians, only one person was infected?

“How many people in the village are not yet infected?” Miralissa inquired.

“Not a single one,” the magician said dispassionately, turning away from her.

Not one? How could that be? Everyone knew that people died on the seventh day, and it had only started three or four days ago.

“Some new form of the disease?” asked Ell. He still had his helmet on.

“Precisely,” Balshin replied in the same dispassionate tone.

Miralissa didn’t say anything. She was thinking and twirling a small charred stick between the fingers of her left hand. The stick she had used to draw spells in the ash.

Oh no!

What was she thinking? To start a fight with the magicians was madness! I was quite sure she only had to break that stick, spit on it, lick it, or do something else very simple, and the slumbering shamanic magic would awaken. I glanced back, as if casually, at the road. The pikemen were still there, but they were already standing nonchalantly along the sides, talking to each other. Our group wasn’t any danger to them, especially since both magicians were dealing with us, so why not have a little chat and leave your cumbersome three-yard pike leaning up against a tree?

“You are on your way to Ranneng?” Klena asked.

“Yes,” Miralissa replied curtly.

“For what purpose?”

“On the king’s business.”

“And why did you travel along a deserted side road, and not the main highway?” the magician asked scathingly.

Now what were they after, may snow vampires tear me apart? Wasn’t it clear that our document was genuine and by hindering us this magician was letting himself in for big trouble, not only from an angry king, but also from the Order, which would never condone such headstrong behavior by its members?

“Nobody warned us that it was closed,” Hallas growled impatiently.

“All the worse for you,” Balshin said, and shrugged.

“And so we cannot pass here?” Miralissa asked, to make absolutely certain.

“Neither pass nor leave. Unfortunately,” said the magician, spreading his hands in a gesture of feigned regret. “You will have to stay here until we have defeated the disease. We cannot put the welfare of the kingdom at risk. Naturally, you will be afforded every possible comfort.”

“But we are healthy!” Lamplighter exclaimed indignantly, speaking for the first time.

“Perhaps so,” the enchantress agreed. “But you have already been told that we cannot take any risks. We shall have to detain you.”

“And how long will it take you to defeat the disease?” Ell spat out venomously.

“Three or four months. Then, if there are no new cases, we will lift the quarantine.”

“Three months!” Hallas exclaimed, choking on the words.

That left our plans in tatters. If we complied, it would be well into autumn before we reached Hrad Spein, and that meant we wouldn’t get back in time. What could we do? Break out the way we had come? But how many men would we lose in breaking out? How many would be felled by arrows, pikes, and the magicians’ spells? Almost all of us.

Our last remaining hope was the shamanic spell that Miralissa had prepared. I kept my eyes fixed on that small charred stick twirling between her fingers.

“Quiet, Hallas,” she said sharply. “Do you intend to detain us, regardless of the king’s order?”

“Yes.”

“You may find yourselves in trouble with the Council of the Order. I shall certainly inform Master Artsivus of this,” said the elfess, making one final attempt to avoid a fight.

“As you wish,” Balshin said with a polite smile. “Inform him, but only after the quarantine has been lifted, not before. You have nothing to fear. Our magic will protect you.”

It seemed to me that the magician’s advice wasn’t worth a spit from the top of the cathedral dome. And the enchantress’s cheek had twitched nervously when Miralissa mentioned the Order.

“What will happen if we refuse to obey you?” Ell asked calmly.

“We shall be obliged to use force,” Balshin said regretfully.

“Calm down, k’lissang,” Miralissa said to Ell. “We shall not spill blood and we shall comply.”

“I knew that you would heed the voice of reason,” the magician said with a polite bow.

“Where will you accommodate us?” asked Miralissa. She snapped the small stick in half with a casual gesture and threw it away.

The magicians took no notice of the elfess’s gesture. What did it matter what she might have broken and thrown away? Balshin and Klena were far too delighted that the haughty elfess had not pulled out her s’kash to pay any attention to such trifles.

“Oh, you need have no concern, Tresh Miralissa! You will be in the chasseurs’ camp, it is very-”

Balshin never finished telling us about the camp, because there were sudden howls of horror from the area of the banners. And-why deny it?-I was terrified at first, too. Until that day I’d never seen a human hand strolling down the road all on its own.

Oh yes, at first glance it was a straightforward human hand, only a bit larger. About a hundred times larger. Three riders and their horses could have fitted on its palm.

The monster shuffled its fingers in lively style as it rambled along from the direction of the village straight toward the howling bowmen. As it approached it panted sadly, and the red eyes, set on the joints of each finger, peered disapprovingly at the bellowing men.

Everyone was howling and yelling, the voices of the bowmen supported by a ragged chorus of pikemen. The shouts were growing louder, more and more panic-stricken.

The monster stopped, supported itself on its thumb and little finger, and raised its other three fingers skyward to reveal its palm, a large area of which was occupied by an immense mouth with sparse, needle-sharp teeth. The hand clearly felt it had done enough panting already, so, for the sake of a little variety, it roared.

And that was when everyone started to run. A couple of the very bravest bowmen fired their arrows at the monster, but they got stuck in its finger-legs without hurting the hand at all.

“Get out of here! Run for it! Save us! Into the forest!” Kli-Kli’s piercing shouts were taken up by the chasseurs dashing along the road.

“Into the forest! Into the forest! Run for it! Run for it!”

The soldiers in white and crimson disappeared as if the wind had swept them away, leaving behind only the most stupid and those who hadn’t found a place to hide yet.

The magicians joined in the fray, shooting fiery beams of light at the hand.

“Come on! Our group has already taken off!” Kli-Kli dug his heels into Featherlight’s sides and dashed off after the rapidly receding Wild Hearts.

I followed him, leaving behind the elves and the battle between the magicians, the bravest of the chasseurs, and the monstrous hand.

There was a sudden shrill gust of wind, and I looked back. Miralissa and Ell were galloping right behind me, leaning down low over the necks of their horses.

The monster hand went flying sideways, crushing a few birch trees. The magicians were weaving their hands about constantly, and it was clear that they had the advantage. Little Bee’s hooves drummed on the wooden bridge and I caught a brief glimpse of the stream before it flew back and away at tremendous speed. We had broken out. Nobody had even tried to stop us. They were all too busy trying to save their own lives.

“We have to keep moving,” Loudmouth gasped. “If they come after us…”

Our group had stopped on the summit of the hill from which we had first seen the village of Vishki burning. Nothing had changed-the black smoke was still staining the sky, showing no sign of abating.

“Calm down,” said Arnkh, taking off his helmet and running one hand over his sweating bald patch. “Didn’t you hear them say that the village is under… what’s it called?”

“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.