by Alexey Pehov
There was something wrong as he walked along the street leading to the field, but Djok couldn’t work out what it was. Then he realized—it was the people! There were far too few of them for the day of the royal tournament! For some reason there were no townsfolk hurrying to take their seats on the benches.
Everybody was discussing something that had happened near the Muddy Gates. Apparently one of the elves had been killed, but Djok didn’t give it a thought, he was completely focused on the victory he was going to win and not concerned about anything else. For the last hour all the bowman had seen in his mind’s eye was the red and white target with the bull’s-eye into which he had to plant at least eight arrows.
Djok walked the final hundred paces to the end of the street and the beginning of the tournament grounds completely alone. Everybody seemed to have vanished into thin air. There was not a soul to be seen, apart from some soldiers of the royal guard standing ahead of him. Djok frowned. Firstly, what were these guardsmen doing here, when usually the municipal guard was used? And secondly, there were far more soldiers than necessary.
There were at least twenty men on foot, half of them with lances and half with crossbows. And ten men on horseback, all in full armor and looking very belligerent. Djok assumed that the knight in white and green armor was in command; at least his armor was the most finely finished.
The men waited in silence as he approached without speaking and no one moved. Djok slowed down and gasped—the tournament flags and the blue and gray royal banner had been lowered to half-mast.
“Has the king died, then?” he muttered in amazement.
That certainly would explain why there had been no one hurrying to the tournament and why the people had looked so worried and frightened.
The guardsmen’s faces were dour and tense. Djok walked up to the men who were blocking his path and turned to one soldier with whom he had drunk beer a few times: “Tramur, what’s going on?”
“Well, just look, he’s come to us!” the soldier said with a crooked grin, taking a tighter grip on his lance. “Drop that bow, you vermin!”
“What?” said Djok, startled. He glanced at the knight in white and green, but the knight didn’t speak.
Tramur struck Djok in the stomach with the handle of his lance. The young man doubled over in pain and dropped his bow. Tears sprang to his eyes and he was completely winded.
The second blow landed on his neck, and the surface of the road swayed, then leapt up and hit him hard in the face. His mouth filled up with blood, his head was full of swirling fog, he tried to get up and ask why they were beating him, but someone kicked him under the ribs and he collapsed back onto the stones of the road.
They beat him for a long time in silence. He tried to protect his head with his hands and curled up like a baby in its mother’s womb, but he couldn’t get away from the blows, there was nowhere to hide. The blows just kept on showering down. Powerful, painful, desperate.
The archer could no longer taste the blood in his mouth, there was too much of it. The noise in his ears was turning thick and dull, like a muddy swamp. Eventually somebody’s voice roared: “That’s enough! Enough, I say! The elves don’t want a dead man.”
Djok didn’t hear any more after that. He dove into the shelter of oblivion.
* * *
He spent the next few days in a foggy daze, waking up in a narrow cell, a genuine stone box, where three men with bored faces, wearing the emblem of the Royal Sandmen, asked him strange, frightening questions.
At first Djok tried to explain, to tell them that he was innocent, but then the beatings started again. Nobody wanted to listen to him.
All the Sandmen wanted was confession, otherwise the dark elves, who were insane with fury, would turn the kingdom into a bloodbath. And then the torture began. He broke down at the third session and confessed to all the outrages that they attributed to him. He no longer cared what happened to him, just as long as they left him in peace for at least a little while.
Djok’s face had been smashed into a bloody pulp, his nose was broken in several places, his fingers had been shattered and his ribs broken and he was covered all over in bruises and cuts. He could barely even move when they tossed him onto the urine-soaked straw in his cell; all he could do was breathe and whine and go to sleep
Sometimes the door of the cell would open and he would have visitors. At those moments he groaned quietly and pitifully, because they started beating him again. Then oblivion returned and for more than a week he was on the brink of death.
But they did not let him die. A magician of the Order helped to bring him back out of the dark.
Djok often had dreams. He was asleep and dreaming, somewhere far, far away from the stone box that some evildoer had had him thrown into. The archer hardly remembered any of his dreams, except for one.…
In this dream a guard came and opened the door of the cell and said with a cheerful smile that he knew Djok was innocent and the crime had been committed by the servants of the Master. The Master was waiting.… After that Djok wept and squirmed about on his straw. And then he fell asleep again.
Afterwards there was a very hasty trial, which he could hardly even remember. Just bright light in his eyes, the pale blobs of lots of faces, and voices talking. They asked him about something and he answered.… One man showed the tall judge his quiver of arrows and then took out an arrow that was broken and covered in dried blood.
“I’m not guilty,” Djok whispered. But no one listened to him and the clerk of the court scraped his pen across his paper. “It was the servants of the Master.…”
The court questioned Lotr, who was red-faced and sweaty, and so frightened that he stammered as he looked around and spoke. Yes, Djok was at my house that day.… Yes, he was upset when he heard that the elfin prince, may he dwell in the light, wanted to take part in the tournament.… Yes, there was something about the look in his eyes.… Why didn’t I notice that immediately, old fool that I am?
And there were other people, too.… Friends, acquaintances, relatives … Yes, he had wanted to win.… Yes, he could have lost to the elf.… Yes, all his life he had been a vain and malicious fellow. Yes, what a terrible disgrace!
Then there was Lia. Yes, Djok had told her he would do anything to win the tournament that day.… He didn’t listen to any more after that, he just kept on whispering one word through his broken lips: “Lia … Lia … Lia.”
It was over very quickly. Everything—his signed confession, his arrow with the blood on it, the testimony from a dozen witnesses—rapidly led the Royal High Court to the only possible conclusion.
When the wooden mallet descended and the old, skinny judge in the black robe and the absurd white wig pronounced the single word, “guilty,” Djok saw the elf who had sat through the whole trial as if he were made of stone look at him and smile. Djok’s trousers were suddenly soaking wet—that smile frightened him far more than all the beatings he had received from men.
* * *
They did not execute him, they did something far more terrible than that—they handed him over to the dark elves. An old elf with faded yellow eyes and hair as dry as straw, the same elf who had frightened Djok so badly at the trial, took charge of him in person.
They put him on a cart with shackles on his feet and drove him out of Ranneng.
For Djok the journey to Zagraba was a single, unbroken thread of squeaking wheels, the sky above his head, the guttural voices of elves, and pain. It came every day, biting into his flesh like red-hot pincers, as soon as evening arrived and the elves halted for the night.
This was when Eroch came to the prisoner and took out a little box of steel needles. The elf never spoke, but every time after the torture, Djok thought that his time had come and he was about to die at any moment. And he waited for his death to come with joyful anticipation.
But the elves were too careful to lose their prisoner as a result of torture. When the pain became absolutely unbearable, when it threatened to
expand and shatter his head open, an elfin shaman appeared and relieved his suffering. And the next evening it was repeated all over again. Day after day Djok suffered absolutely unbearable torment, dying, cursing the gods, coming back to life, weeping, and dying again. There was no end to this terrible dream.…
He did not remember much about Zagraba … green leaves, tinkling brooks, cold, and pain.… They took him somewhere, showed him to someone, hundreds of elfin faces with fangs, an old elf with a black coronet on his head, silence, and more pain.…
* * *
For some reason all the trees here grew upside down. So did the grass. And the sun set upward. The elves walked upside down on the ground with their heads downward.
For a long time he couldn’t understand what was happening. He only realized the truth when he noticed that the blood oozing feebly from a cut on his cheek was falling on his forehead instead of his chin, and then dripping off onto the ground that was above his head.
It was very simple; he was hanging head down on a tree with his feet securely tied to a thick branch. How long had he been there like this? An hour? A day?
It turned dark and night came to the forest, and stars began shining through the crowns of the trees down below.
There was nobody guarding him. There was no need. He could never escape from the elfin spider web rope, and how far could a man half dead from torture run through a strange forest?
The archer plunged back into oblivion, trying to overcome the pain. He was woken by a quiet rustling in the grass, and when he opened his eyes he saw a dark female silhouette.
An elfess, he thought.
The person standing there said nothing, and neither did he. He was indifferent; he had already grown used to the fact that many elves came just to look at him. Let her look, as long as she didn’t beat him. Suddenly she laughed.
“Who … are you?”
It was hard for him to form the words; he hadn’t spoken for a long time. Most of the time he simply howled in pain.
“You poor thing,” the woman sighed.
“Lia? Is that really you?” he gasped, unable to believe his ears.
“Lia? Well, you can call me that if you like,” she said, walking out of the shadow into the moonlight.
She was just as beautiful as she had been in the garden, on that cursed day when the elfin prince was killed. Light brown hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, full lips.
Lia. His Lia. The one who betrayed him.
“But … How?”
How could this girl be here, so far away from home, in the heart of the country of the elves?
“The servants of the Master can do much more than that.”
“The Master? I’m not guilty! I couldn’t possibly have done it!”
“I know,” she said with a smile.
“You know. Then why didn’t you say anything? You have to tell the elves, you have to explain to them—”
“It’s too late. The elves won’t listen to anyone, they’re thirsting for vengeance. They won’t try to find out if you’re really guilty or not for at least a few months. But unfortunately you don’t have that much time. The elves have decided to make an exception—tomorrow the Green Leaf is waiting for you.”
Djok squirmed on his rope and started swaying like a pendulum. He sobbed in terror. He did not want to die like that.
“But you have a choice, you fool.” Lia walked up close to him, and he caught the scent of her strawberry perfume. “Either the dark elves will make an example of you with a form of execution that they have only ever used on the orcs before or…”
“Or?” Djok repeated like an echo.
“… or you will become a faithful servant of the Master.”
She spoke for a very long time, and when she finished, Djok said only a single word.
“Yes.”
Hatred blazed up in his eyes.
The girl took a crooked elfin knife out of the folds of her dress, stood up on tiptoe, and slit the man’s throat with a gentle movement.
The hot cataract poured down onto her hair, face, neck, and dress. She stood there, accepting this terrible baptism in bloody dew … smiling. When it was all over, the girl looked at the body hanging in front of her and said:
“You will be born again, born in the House of Love, and become the very first, the most devoted servant. You will be Djok the Winter-Bringer.”
A moment later the forest glade was empty, apart from a dead man swaying slowly on a rope.
* * *
“You slept badly last night. More nightmares?” Kli-Kli asked me as he wrapped himself in his cloak against the chilly morning air.
“Yeah,” I replied morosely, rolling up my blanket.
“What about this time?”
“Djok the Winter-Bringer.”
“Oho! Tell me about it!” the goblin said eagerly.
“Leave me alone, Kli-Kli, I’ve no time for you now.” After the previous day’s conversation round the campfire and my new dream, I had plenty to think about.
Kli-Kli grunted in disappointment and wandered off to pester Lamplighter, who was saddling our horses.
That morning the weather turned bad again and there was a light drizzle. The drops were so fine that I could barely even see them.
At least it wasn’t the kind of downpour we had had before. We were all thoroughly sick of that cursed rain. It’s hard to say which is worse—stupefying heat or this kind of dank misery.
The fire had burnt out completely overnight and the fine rain had extinguished the coals left behind. There was no point in lighting a new one, it would take up far too much time. We ate a bite of the cold meat from some partridges that Ell had shot the day before and set off on our way.
The dreary plain with its low hills stretched on and on with no end in sight. The clouds and the semidarkness made us all feel very depressed. After an hour and a half of galloping, Alistan led our group out onto an old road, half washed away and barely visible under the puddles.
“There will be a village about three leagues ahead,” said Ell.
“We need to lay in some stores and buy horses,” Alistan Markauz said with a nod.
“If they will sell any,” Ell said in a doubtful tone of voice.
“The peasants need every animal they have,” Honeycomb put in.
“We’ll see when we get there,” said Alistan, and led the group on along the road.
We started moving more slowly, the horses’ hooves slid in the mud and the puddles that were seething with rain. There was a shroud hanging over the world, and we could only see a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards ahead.
The road started going down the slope of yet another hill. Streams of water ran down past us, flowing into an immense puddle, where it looked as if we might have to swim again—the horses were up to their knees in water. We lost our way because we couldn’t see the road and found ourselves at an old, flooded graveyard.
The tops of the monuments on the graves stuck up out of the water like little islands. We rode past them, trying to make the horses follow each other so that, Sagot forbid, they wouldn’t fall into some deep pit that could easily be concealed under the layer of water.
“Now where have we got to?” Honeycomb asked gloomily, talking to himself.
“The land of the dead, can’t you see?” muttered Hallas, who didn’t understand that some questions are simply rhetorical.
“What would a graveyard be doing in a place like this, one that gets flooded?” asked Honeycomb, casting an indifferent glance at a half-submerged coffin floating past us: It had obviously been washed out of a recent shallow grave.
“The village is near now,” replied Marmot, adjusting the edge of his hood to protect Invincible from the rain.
“The sooner the better,” said Deler, whose hat had long ago been reduced to a shapeless, sodden mass. “I want to be inside, in the warm, with a fire and mulled wine and a warm bed and all the pleasures of life.”
“I don’t think we’ll be able
to find you an inn out here in the back of beyond. Be grateful if they let us spend the night in the barn,” Marmot replied, wiping the drops of rain off his face.
“This rain’s set in to last for the rest of the day,” Bass said in a hoarse voice, trying to get his horse to walk alongside Little Bee.
“Do you want to end up in a grave? Either get back or move up,” I told him.
He gave me an angry glance from under his hood and reined back his horse.
The graveyard ended as suddenly as it had begun. Something that looked like a road appeared from under the water, rising up to the top of the next hill.
I took an instant dislike to the village—about fifty low wooden houses standing along the wall of a black forest of fir trees. Soaking wet fields that had been cleared and turned, thick mud in the streets, smoke from the stove chimneys hanging over the roofs, and the rain into the bargain.
A boy walking toward us with a bucket dropped it into the mud when he saw our group, and ran off, howling. Bass swore through his teeth, apparently not realizing that armed men on horseback suddenly appearing from behind a curtain of rain might be enough to frighten a grown man, let alone a ten-year-old boy.
When we reached the center of the village, all the locals were sheltering from the rain and the street was deserted. The raindrops trickled down the roofs, drummed on our hoods, splashed in the puddles. We were surrounded by their quiet whispering. A big hefty man with an ax came out of one house and looked at us in alarm.
“What is the name of this village?” Honeycomb asked him.
“Upper Otters,” the peasant replied glumly, toying nervously with his ax. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“You won’t have any. Is there an inn in the village?”
“Straight on, about two hundred yards. The gray house with the sign. You can’t miss it.”
Honeycomb gave the man a nod of thanks and set his horse moving. We rode in the direction the man had indicated. I couldn’t resist glancing back, but the peasant with the ax had already disappeared.
