Shadow Prowler

by Alexey Pehov

  “Bolt!” I roared before I even entered the reading hall.

  I was right! There was a lantern on the table, and beside it a bottle of wine, a half-eaten crust of bread, and a bunch of spring onions.

  The bottle was almost empty, with just a little wine left in the bottom. The old man was stretched out on the floor in a puddle of red wine. Just look at the state of him!

  I walked toward the sleeping drunk, muttering something uncomplimentary under my breath about people who like to guzzle wine at the most inappropriate times, feverishly trying to work out the quickest way to bring him back to a state of awareness and question him.

  “Bolt! Wake up now! Get up. You look like a pig. It’s disgusting!” I leaned down and shook him by the shoulder. “How long can you go on . . .”

  I didn’t finish the phrase, because I noticed something rather upsetting—Bolt didn’t seem to be breathing. And he wasn’t lying in a puddle of wine, as I’d thought at first, but in a puddle of his own blood. I cautiously turned the old man over onto his back.

  I was right. Some bastard had slit the poor old man’s throat from ear to ear. The body was still warm, and not very much blood had escaped yet. That meant the murderer or murderers had only finished Bolt off very recently. And that meant it was very likely they hadn’t got very far yet and I could easily catch up with them on a nearby street.

  I almost gave way to this momentary impulse, but the voice of reason cooled my ardor. This time the Master had got here before me, and now I would never learn whose ring Rostgish and Shnyg had shown to Bolt. And it made no sense to go chasing after unknown killers who might well turn out not even to be human. There was no way I could help the poor fellow now.

  It was a pity; I’d grown quite attached to the crazy, grouchy old-timer.

  There was a trail of blood leading away from the body and winding between the tables into the depths of the hall. I took the lantern off the table to light the way and followed the traces of blood. Before I had even gone twenty paces I came across a second body.

  I knew this overgrown lout. He was one of the characters who had gone running out of the alley where Roderick and I were ambushed. This time his luck had run out and he hadn’t managed to get away. There was a knife protruding from the stiff’s chest. The last time I’d seen it, Bolt had it on his belt. So the old man had managed to sell his life dearly after all—it was true that the Wild Hearts didn’t leave this life quietly; one of the killers had paid for his . . .

  Three shadows sprang into the circle of light from somewhere behind the dark bookcases, preventing me from completing my thought. I noticed a glint of metal and leapt to one side.

  Putrid Darkness! Why had I decided that the killers had already left? I jumped back, pressing up against a bookcase. The three figures were coming closer. As ill luck would have it, my crossbow wasn’t loaded, which made it useless. My only hope was my knife. I took the weapon out without speaking, held it out in front of me, and waited for them to attack, somehow certain that we wouldn’t part in peace. Lads like these would kill their own grandmother, and the rest of the family into the bargain. I could tell, because I’d seen two of the killers before, and not exactly in the best of circumstances.

  The first one, the one who had jumped right at me, was the partner of the stiff that Bolt had killed. This thug was holding a knife in his left hand and smiling.

  The second one was none other than the municipal guard Yargi, this time not in his orange and black uniform but wearing civilian clothes, so I hadn’t recognized him straightaway. That meant these lads were working for the unknown servant of the Master, if one of the bribed servants of the law was here with them.

  I wondered where the rest of them were.

  I didn’t know the third killer. He looked tough, tanned by the winds, you might say. A wolf between two mongrel dogs. The knife in his hand kept breaking into a dance.

  “Just look at the people you can meet in places like this,” Thug drawled slowly as he and his partners halted about ten paces away from me. “Now who’s this that’s taken a fancy to reading books?”

  “Enough talk, we finish him and get out of here! The job’s already done!” hissed the third man, moving forward again.

  “Calm down, Midge,” Thug said reassuringly. “We can kill two birds with one stone here. This is Harold.”

  “That’s Harold?” said Yargi, delighted. “His head’s worth its weight in gold!”

  “Yes, and now we’ll cut it off for him,” said Thug, moving toward me.

  “You’re a bit braver than you used to be,” I said, curving my lips into an ugly grin. “I recall that only a few days ago you and the stiff over there took off with your heels twinkling.”

  “Ah, but you don’t have the magician with you now,” Thug chuckled, tossing his knife from one hand to the other.

  “Stop, let me finish him,” Yargi said, licking his thin lips and looking at me with a greedy gleam in his eyes. “Let me have a bit of fun.”

  “Watch out he doesn’t finish you,” Midge chuckled, but he and Thug moved back, freeing the space for a fight. The lads had obviously decided they would like a bit of light entertainment, and they didn’t rate my humble personage’s chances at all. “Don’t drag it out, now. If anyone else comes, this place will be full of bodies.”

  “Nobody’s interested in this dump. You already topped the old man, Midge. Now relax—”

  “But the old man did for that friend of yours first,” Midge put in. “A real Wild Heart.”

  “But you were one of them, too.”

  “Shut up!” Midge barked.

  A Wild Heart? Here? Could he really be a deserter? That meant the lad was even more dangerous than I’d imagined!

  “Well then, thief? Shall we let the fun begin?” Yargi smiled with his jagged mouth of teeth and leapt toward me, aiming his knife at my stomach.

  I dodged sideways and tried to reach him with my weapon, but failed. I had to jump toward the lantern standing on the floor and wave my knife through the air to drive Yargi well back.

  “Where’s your crossbow, thief?” Thug asked in a mocking voice, but I ignored him.

  Yargi moved into the attack again and we started circling round the lantern, waiting for someone to make the first inexcusable and fatal mistake.

  Our knives clashed a couple of times with a repulsive clang, then they started weaving a cobweb pattern of feints and dodges, slowly but surely leading one of us to victory and the other to the grave. Steel sliced through the air and our shadows danced across the walls of bookcases and shelves.

  I had to sweat a bit; the damned guard was holding his knife with the Nizin reverse grip. On the one hand that was bad—the skunk could easily shift his blade backward and forward between a cutting or a slashing blow. On the other hand, it was good, because the Nizin technique was intended for soldiers wearing armor that protected the free hand against being cut, but for anyone with just a shirt instead of chain mail and a chain-mail glove, this technique was a double-edged sword.

  Whoooosh! My opponent’s knife came flying at my face. I parried, but at the last moment his weapon changed direction and I had to twist sharply to avoid being stabbed in the armpit. Yargi was a little bit unlucky, because when his blow missed its target, his inertia spun him round slightly, and I had time to strike at his left arm and jump away before he could realize what had happened. He hissed in pain as he shook his injured wrist.

  “You’re not too agile, my friend.”

  “Shut up. I’ll kill you!” he hissed. There were heavy drops of blood flowing off his fingers and falling to the floor.

  Why strain yourself trying to reach your enemy’s stomach or neck, if you can give him deep cuts on his wrists and wait for the wounds to make him weak from loss of blood and admit him into that world that the priests assure us is blessed? Yargi also realized that he didn’t have much time left, and he came charging straight at me like a rhinoceros, trying to trick me with rapid feints. I wriggled li
ke an eel, but I still got a slight cut on my chest.

  “It’s time to stop this fairground performance and leave,” I heard someone say. Midge’s patience was almost exhausted.

  “You’ll be carried out of here feetfirst, you skunk!”

  When he heard me say that, Yargi hesitated for a moment, and I tore the cloak off my shoulder, flung it in his face, and immediately moved in and struck him with my knife. Thug swore viciously behind me.

  Yargi dropped his knife, started to wheeze, and grabbed hold of my wrist. I pulled it free with an effort, leaving the knife behind in his belly. Harold was left without his most important and most persuasive argument.

  The other two killers came for me without any more talk. I leapt back in a most inelegant manner, on the way flinging the lantern into Thug’s face and sticking my hand into my bag to feel for a magic vial. Thug caught the lantern I’d thrown at him as if it were a ball and clicked his tongue in disappointment.

  I fumbled in my bag and tossed a round little bottle of poisonous-yellow liquid at Midge, but he ducked his head and the damned magical bauble smashed against one of the legs of a gigantic set of shelves loaded with books. So instead of the hired killer’s head, it was the wooden leg that dissolved into thin air.

  A remarkable stroke of luck!

  “Come here, Harold! Time to stop running! I’m going to slice you to ribbons!”

  Meanwhile the shelves, having lost their support, started tumbling forward, straight onto the unsuspecting killers. Just one moment longer, and they both would have been crushed, but the sound of books slipping off the shelves attracted their attention. Midge dived aside, but Thug, being rather less bright, started turning round, opened his mouth wide in amazement, and was hit by the hail of tumbling tomes. Then the shelves that were missing a leg collapsed, overwhelming the man and flattening him to a pancake. His final howl was drowned out by a loud rumble.

  I glanced round. Midge was nowhere to be seen. Without wasting any more time, I reclaimed my knife, wiped it on the dead man’s clothes, and put it back in its scabbard. Then I loaded my crossbow: I pulled on the lever to tighten the string and set the bolts in their firing position. Then, for extra reassurance, I put another bolt between my teeth so that if the first two missed the target I wouldn’t lose too much time reloading. Having armed myself, I began methodically withdrawing to the exit.

  I forced myself not to run, although I wanted to dash through the dark rooms and out into the light as quickly as possible. But to hurry would have been to lose control of the situation and, consequently, to make myself vulnerable.

  Eventually the damned bookcases and shelves came to an end and I was left facing the corridor that led to the service door. I stopped, trying to decide how best to sneak along a narrow tunnel where it was hard even to turn round, let alone engage in armed combat with a Wild Heart.

  It was his shadow that gave him away. It was pale and weak, almost hidden by shafts of light, but I could still see it. Midge might have been an experienced warrior, but he hadn’t done a very good job of hiding. The killer had climbed up a set of shelves and hung there, waiting for me to pass by below him.

  We both made our move at the same time—I spun round, raising the crossbow, and he jumped down onto my shoulders with his knife.

  The bowstring twanged. The first bolt just missed my enemy as he fell onto me and struck one of the thick volumes standing on the top shelf. I had no time to take a second shot. Or even to jump aside. The killer slumped on top of me with all his weight, and the only reason I wasn’t killed was that I managed to strike him across the wrist with the crossbow with all my might. His knife and my weapon went flying off to one side.

  I fell onto my back, hitting my head against the stone floor, and showers of bright sparks exploded inside it. The accursed killer landed on me and without a second’s hesitation, not disconcerted in the least by having lost his knife, he smashed his fist into my face.

  Bang! One of the gnomes’ powder kegs exploded on my right temple and I gritted my teeth, almost biting through the bolt I was holding between them. Struggling against the pain, I made a highly inelegant effort to kick him, but this pitiful attempt was unsuccessful. Midge swung his fist back and smashed it into me again. I grabbed the crossbow bolt out of my teeth, swung it, and stuck it into my opponent’s shoulder. He roared and slackened his grip a little bit, but then smashed me in the face with his elbow with a furious growl. Unlike his partners, he wasn’t given to idle conversation, and simply wanted to finish the job as quickly as possible so that he could be on his way.

  The finale of our epic battle, which was worthy of being recorded in the frescoes in the royal palace, was that Midge’s sinewy hands grabbed the neck of a certain Harold in a crayfish-claw grip and set about choking him in a rather determined fashion by closing off the flow of air to his lungs.

  I punched Midge on the ribs with both hands, but that didn’t have any effect, either. He merely tightened his grip like an imperial hound and leaned over me, gritting his teeth. The bolt in his shoulder was no hindrance to him at all.

  Someone began wheezing in a most convincing fashion. Then the wheezing began fading away, retreated into the background, and got tangled up in the shadows. When the darkness had completly subdued me, from out of some other world, a beautiful world full of fresh air, I heard the twang of a bowstring, the whistle of an arrow in flight, and a dull thud. Then something very heavy fell on me, finally pinning me to the floor. Amazingly enough it became easier to breathe.

  I lay there without opening my eyes, breathing in that priceless gift of the gods—air. Everything inside me was wheezing and whirling and whistling. My neck hurt unbearably, it was even painful to swallow, but I was breathing, and that was the most important thing just at the moment.

  “Alive, my lord!” a voice above me said.

  “Get him up!” To judge from the angry voice, that was Baron Frago Lanten in person.

  Sheer politeness obliged me to part my heavy eyelids and take a look at the new characters in this never-ending comedy. I was right.

  The baron, in an unusually dour mood, was standing over me in the company of about two dozen of his faithful dogs. The heavy item that had fallen on me was none other than the dead Midge. They had shot an arrow straight between his shoulder blades, and the hired killer had decided to die right on top of me.

  To be quite honest, I must confess that this was the first time in my life I had ever been so glad to see the municipal guard. In my mind I took back all the bad things I’d ever said about their skill and their intellectual capacity, and swore on the health of the leader of the Doralissians that this week I wouldn’t think anything nasty about them even once.

  A soldier took a firm grip on me under my arms and set me on my feet. For some reason the floor was swaying about rather vigorously and I had to make a serious effort not to fall. After its recent encounter with Midge’s fist, my face was burning with an appalling heat, as if someone had briefly held a red-hot poker against it.

  “Baron Lanten? You have no idea how glad I am to see you here,” I croaked quite sincerely.

  My throat was still sore, and I could still feel the other man’s remorseless fingers on my neck.

  “I should think so,” one of the guards snorted.

  “Harold, you son of a bitch, what in the name of Darkness are you doing here?” Frago barked. I could see that I’d spoiled his mood for an entire month ahead. “What if we hadn’t turned up?”

  “Then the story would have ended very sadly for me,” I muttered.

  I hate it when people yell at me.

  “And not only for you!” Frago went on, still howling. “The king would have had my hide!”

  “How did you know you should look for me here?”

  “We didn’t know,” snapped the baron, a little calmer now, and sat down on a chair hastily moved up for him by one of his subordinates. Naturally, no one offered me a seat, but I was in no state to be concerned about etiquet
te and so I took a stool and made myself comfortable facing the baron.

  “We didn’t know,” the baron repeated, and glanced at the guards. “Djig, take a stroll.”

  “As you say, milord.”

  “We were looking for this criminal,” said the baron, jabbing one finger disdainfully toward Midge’s corpse. “A deserter and a traitor. The Wild Hearts were looking for him, too, but we were luckier. A little bird whispered in my ear that this bold lad was in the Royal Library, so we came to catch him while he was available. We weren’t planning on meeting you.”

  It was hardly surprising that Frago himself had decided to take part in the hunt and the arrest. Deserters from the Wild Hearts were regarded as the most dangerous of criminals. And it was very lucky for Midge that he’d caught that arrow in his back. If the Wild Hearts had got their hands on him, they would have talked to him in a rather different tone of voice. He wouldn’t have departed this world quite so easily.

  “Let me repeat my question. What are you doing here, Harold?”

  “I came to look up an old friend. He’s the custodian of this library.”

  “And where is your friend, if you would be so kind as to tell me?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  So I told him. I had to leave out half of the details, of course. I didn’t say a word about the Master and his servants, or the fact that I had seen some of the killers before that night.

  “Well, we can say that you have been very lucky, thief,” the baron chuckled when he had heard my story. It was clear that he could barely tolerate my presence. It obviously enraged him.