Shadow Prowler

by Alexey Pehov

  “Who was that he was swearing about?” Hallas asked, staring in amazement at Tomcat’s wild gesticulations as he spoke to Miralissa.

  Whatever it was that Tomcat had sensed, Miralissa and Markauz both looked alarmed. And Ell kept glancing at the advancing clouds.

  “What did I tell you, Harold,” Kli-Kli whispered.

  “What?” I asked mechanically, trying like everyone else to see what Tomcat had spotted in the sky.

  “Do you ever listen? I said the shamans would never stop until they managed to work their magic.”

  Meanwhile the tracker had finished explaining something to Miralissa. She looked at Alistan, and he nodded decisively.

  “What’s happened?” asked Uncle, barely able to contain himself.

  “Let’s go and ask,” Arnkh suggested wisely.

  During our journey a certain order of travel had been established. Alistan and the elves always rode at the front. They spoke about subjects that only interested them and made decisions for us about matters of importance for the group. The Wild Hearts kept company with each other, trying not to butt into the conversations between the elves and Markauz. There could be no question of simply talking to them on the road, without any special reason. The only exceptions were Eel’s long conversations with Ell.

  It wasn’t that the men were shy or they avoided the leaders of our group, it was simply that they felt, clearly on the basis of many years as soldiers, that everyone should do his own job and there was no point in bothering the commanders with petty details. They’d call you if necessary.

  And while we were on the road the Wild Hearts themselves were divided up into little groups. Either according to their interests, or simply on the basis of a natural liking for each other. But that’s perfectly normal—on a journey it’s very hard to travel as one big pack. Honeycomb and Uncle. Eel, Tomcat, and Arnkh. Hallas, Deler, Marmot, me, and Kli-Kli. Loudmouth and Lamplighter. Although Kli-Kli was also the only one who dashed from the head of the group to the tail and back on Featherlight, managing to talk to everyone at least a hundred times a day.

  I personally couldn’t give a damn for all these rules, but it just turned out that I found myself in a small party that included Marmot, as well as the gnome and the dwarf, with whom I had close connections from the fight in Stalkon’s palace, so I stuck to their company.

  Arnkh’s suggestion that we should go and find out what was going on was not destined to be acted on. Miralissa rode back to us herself.

  “Tomcat says that the advancing storm is artificial in origin.”

  “Can you put that more simply?” Loudmouth asked plaintively.

  “What’s so hard to understand?” Tomcat asked in amazement. “Someone conjured up these clouds, you thickhead!”

  “Shamans?” Lamplighter asked with a reproachful glance at Egrassa.

  Of course, Mumr felt that Egrassa hadn’t done enough work with his bow in the forest where the servants of the Nameless One were trying to work their magic. If the soldier had been in the elf’s place, he wouldn’t have let slip the opportunity to swing his bidenhander a couple of times.

  “Maybe shamans and maybe not,” Tomcat said with a shrug. “But it’s magic, that much I can guarantee.”

  “It has to be shamans, it couldn’t be anyone else!” Kli-Kli sighed.

  “Can we avoid it?” asked Markauz, tugging on his mustache.

  “I can’t do anything,” said Miralissa, spreading her hands helplessly. “My skill’s not great enough. I can’t feel anything.”

  “It’s weather sorcery. The element of rain is pretty unstable,” Tomcat muttered.

  “What’s that?” Hallas said impatiently.

  “We were taught . . .” Tomcat hesitated for a moment. “We were taught that the rain magic created by shamanism is unstable. It lasts for no more than four or perhaps five hours and is heavily dependent not only on the skill of the shamans, but also on natural phenomena. The wind, for instance.”

  “You want to try to get away from these clouds?” asked Ell, one of the first to grasp what Tomcat was thinking.

  “Uh-huh. The wind now is blowing directly to the southwest, so we can gallop southeast. If we’re lucky we’ll part company with the storm.”

  “Oh, sure,” Honeycomb snorted. “It looks like someone’s driving it along. Just look how fast it’s moving!”

  I glanced involuntarily at the wild weather advancing toward us.

  “And just what can that little cloud do?” I couldn’t help blurting out.

  “Nothing.” Egrassa answered me instead of Tomcat.

  “Then what are we planning to run away from?” asked milord Markauz, getting the question in ahead of me.

  “From what that cloud is trying to hide,” Miralissa answered him in an extremely dismal voice.

  “That will be an ordinary rain cloud, with ordinary thunder and lightning,” Tomcat said. “The worst it can do is soak us to the skin. And if the shamanism is really good, there’ll be a really wild storm. But not directly aimed. That is, it won’t try to destroy us especially. It will be an ordinary storm, just like hundreds of others. If anyone’s hurt, it will be by accident.”

  “You ought to give lectures at the university in Ranneng. I didn’t understand a thing!” Deler complained. “What about the thing the clouds are trying to hide?”

  “A bank of rain clouds with thunder and lightning always covers up any other magic,” Miralissa explained. “There isn’t a magician in Siala, even if he’s worth three of the Nameless One, who can see hostile magic inside a thundercloud until the sorcery is literally right there under his nose. Tomcat senses that the storm was created by shamanism, but he doesn’t know what it might be hiding. The shamans could have hidden something that they don’t want the magicians of the Order to see. Clouds make a magnificent screen.”

  “The nearest magicians are tens of leagues away, they needn’t have worried,” Arnkh growled.

  “Then they must be hiding something that can be seen for tens of leagues,” Kli-Kli disagreed.

  There were more lightning flashes and rumbles of thunder, still in the distance, but much closer now.

  “Enough idle talking! Tomcat, since you can sense the storm, you’re the one to get us out of this. Lead on!” said Markauz. He had no intention of waiting for the rain.

  And our crazy game of tag with the weather began.

  Tomcat took control with an assured hand and set the horses a pace no worse than when we were hightailing it out of Vishki. The rumble of the thunder kept getting closer and closer. The wind grew stronger, bending the tall grass right down to the ground. The music of the crickets and the songs of the birds fell silent. Every now and then one of us would look back to check how much farther we could gallop before the rain hit us.

  But I just kept looking straight ahead. In the first place, at such a furious gallop, I was afraid of falling off Little Bee, and in the second place, the one time I did look round I got such a fright that I almost yelled out loud. The cloudy sky that was dogging our heels was black enough to darken a hundred worlds.

  Even Eel had turned pale, and that was completely out of character for the coolheaded Garrakan.

  “The wind’s changed!” Kli-Kli shouted. “To the east! The clouds are being carried off to the side!”

  I forced myself to look round. Now, no matter how hard the storm tried, there was no way we could end up at the very heart of it. It had shifted far to the east of us. But our group would still be caught by the edge of the magical tempest, that much was certain. And though the downpour might be less powerful, the rain would still be pretty substantial—no one had the slightest doubt about that.

  The menacing clouds blocked off the entire sky. A furious wind tossed up handfuls of sand aimed at my face and I had to pull the hood of my elfin drokr cloak up over my head.

  Others suffered worse than I did. Deler screwed up his watering eyes and swore nonstop until the sand got into his mouth. The wind flapped Hallas’s bea
rd and the horses’ manes. Mumr’s hat was torn off his head, but he didn’t stop to try to take the wind’s new plaything away from it.

  A whirlwind of a thousand demons howled in our ears and the solid wall of clouds advanced on us like a herd of cattle on the rampage. Again and again the festoons of diamond-bright lightning flashes fused together into broad sheets running across the entire horizon and lighting up the wasteland, which looked even more desolate in the dark. The wind was like an insane cowherd, driving his rain-swollen clouds straight at us. The rain hadn’t actually started yet, but soon, very soon, behind the rumbling of the thunder and the flashing of the lightning, streams of water would come cascading down onto the ground that was frozen in impatient anticipation.

  There was a flash, and we heard an angry rumble on the wind.

  Another flash.

  “Now there’ll be a real bang!” shouted the jester.

  There was a right royal bang. The skies were split apart by the roaring of the gods, and the horses whinnied in fright.

  “Forward!” Tomcat shouted from somewhere up ahead, trying to make himself heard above the noise of the wind.

  An intense peal of thunder reverberated across the sky, hurtling past us like a wild stallion and blocking my ears for a moment. The thunderclap was loudest right above our heads.

  I barely managed to keep my seat on Little Bee, and Loudmouth’s horse reared up, almost throwing its rider. Deler was unlucky: He went flopping down onto the ground and if not for Marmot, who adroitly grabbed the dwarf’s horse by the ear, the startled animal would have bolted. Deler showered the “stupid beast, unworthy to carry a dwarf on its thrice-cursed hump” with fearsome abuse and scrambled back into the saddle. We all had to make an incredible effort to calm our frightened horses.

  “Forward!” Tomcat had no intention of stopping, and he set his horse to a gallop.

  The group strung out into a line and followed the tracker.

  The rain covered us with its wet wings, and the isolated drops were replaced by a roaring cataract cascading down from the sky. In the blink of an eye, everyone who wasn’t wearing an elfin cloak was soaked to the skin.

  The thunder and lightning, the cataracts of water and other attributes of any decent, self-respecting storm shifted farther east. The booming was more distant now, no longer threatening us.

  But the rain had not gone away. The entire sky was shrouded in dismal clouds that poured water down onto the earth from their inexhaustible heavenly stores. Not a single blue patch, not a single ray of sunshine. Hargan’s Wasteland was enveloped in a gloomy, autumnal atmosphere. The earth was soaked with water and thick mud appeared out of nowhere under the horses’ hooves, completely covering the grass.

  The weather was foul, cheerless, and cold, especially for men who had grown accustomed to constant heat. Hallas suffered the worst of all. He was soaked right through and shuddering with the cold, and his teeth could be heard chattering ten yards away. The stubborn gnome rejected Miralissa’s suggestion that he should put on a cloak.

  “Watch out, you’ll fall ill, and I won’t make a fuss over you,” Deler muttered from under his cloak. “Don’t expect me to spoon-feed you medicine.”

  “You!” the gnome snorted. “I wouldn’t take any medicine from you. I know your lousy k-kind! You’ll sprinkle in some poison or other and then I’ll wheeze, turn blue, and k-kick the bucket. I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction!”

  “You’re no good to me soaking wet,” the dwarf said sulkily.

  Hallas snorted and didn’t say anything else. The group was no longer galloping headlong through the meadows of the wasteland; the horses had changed to a rapid walk.

  In about three hours it would start to get dark, so we would have to stop for the night somewhere soon.

  “Ah, when’s this going to stop?” the gnome finally cried out in exasperation.

  His lips had turned blue and his teeth were rattling out a tattoo that would have turned the orcs’ drummers green with envy. “Not before tomorrow morning,” said Honeycomb, casting a glance up at the gray sky.

  “Tomorrow morning!” Hallas groaned.

  “Definitely not before then.”

  As evening came on, the rain grew stronger. It had already completely soaked the ground, and now the meadows were transformed into vast puddles of water. The hooves of the horses stuck in this shallow marsh and the animals began to tire, even though we were moving rather slowly. But after two leagues of this, we left the meadows behind us and came out onto something like a track.

  “These are the remains of the old road. The one that led from Ranneng to Avendoom,” Kli-Kli declared from under his hood, as if he had heard my thoughts.

  “It’s incredibly well preserved,” Marmot muttered. “Almost five hundred years have gone by, and it’s only been overgrown by grass.”

  “Noth-thing surprising about that,” Hallas grumbled. “It was b-built by gn-gnomes.”

  “Come on, you joker, pull the other one,” Lamplighter said dismissively.

  “I’m not p-pulling your leg. Th-this is our work. I can smell it. Deler, you t-tell him.”

  “Of course it’s yours,” the dwarf agreed amicably. “But you’d do better to keep quiet and get warm. You can’t even keep your teeth together.”

  “Why makes you so concerned for my health?”

  “If you die, I’ll have to dig your grave.”

  Hallas wrapped himself more tightly in the cloak and didn’t answer.

  Despite the rain, mist started rising from the ground. The transparent white wisps trailed across the earth, insinuating themselves between the stalks of grass, enveloping the hooves of the horses. But as soon as a wind sprang up, the mist dispersed and retreated for a while.

  Markauz rode up to us and reined in his horse.

  “Hey, Tomcat! Are you sure about those dangers? You didn’t get anything confused at all?”

  “That’s right!” said Loudmouth, supporting Alistan. “The storm passed over ages ago. We’ve been getting soaked for the last four hours, and we still haven’t had any particular problems from the sky.”

  “Well, thanks be to Sagra, let’s hope we don’t have any for another hundred years,” Uncle drawled.

  “I can’t understand what’s going on myself,” Tomcat replied, sounding bewildered. “I felt it before, but now I don’t. There’s nothing. I’m beginning to think I must have imagined it.”

  “What about Miralissa and Egrassa?” Mumr asked Alistan cautiously.

  “No, they don’t know anything.”

  “So it’s passed us by then,” Loudmouth said with a sigh of relief.

  “Don’t go building your hopes up too high,” said Kli-Kli, putting on a sour face. “It’ll pass us by all right, then turn round and hit us really hard!”

  “You’ll jinx us, saying things like that, you green dummy!” Honeycomb rebuked the goblin angrily. “You should just say it’ll pass us by, and not think bad thoughts.”

  “Well, of course, I’m an optimist by nature, but traveling with Harold tends to introduce too much pessimism into my character.”

  Kli-Kli cast a significant glance in my direction. I replied in kind with a look that promised the goblin a wonderful life if he didn’t shut up. The jester merely giggled.

  A goblin’s eyesight is about ten times keener than a man’s. What looked to me like a gray shadow barely visible through the rain and the mist was an unexpected discovery to Kli-Kli. He cried out in surprise, whooped to his horse, and raced off to overtake the elves.

  There was something rustling and crunching under the horses’ hooves, something in the grass that had grown over the road, as if the horses were treading on a crust of frozen snow. I leaned down from my saddle, but I couldn’t see anything except the tall green stems.

  Little Bee’s hoof came down on the end of some kind of stick, and as the horse stood on it I again heard the sound that had caught my attention. After another ten yards there was another stick. This time I could
make it out quite clearly. Black, blacker than an I’ilya willow, irregular and lumpy. It was a fragment of a human shinbone.

  I turned cold. The horses were walking over bones. We were trampling the remains of dead strangers. I heard that crunching and scraping first on one side, then on the other.

  “May I kiss a frying pan,” Lamplighter swore. “There was a battle here!”

  Kli-Kli came back, and his little face was darker than the cloud that had been chasing us in the morning.

  “And what a battle it was, my friend Lamplighter. The battle of Hargan’s Brigade.”

  “That’s impossible,” Marmot objected. “In five hundred years bones sink deep into the earth. They would have disappeared completely, they couldn’t just be lying here as if was only two years since the battle happened.”

  “I don’t like it here,” Loudmouth said slowly.

  “The bones are as fragile as Nizin porcelain,” Kli-Kli muttered. “And you’re wrong when you say the remains aren’t from the time of that battle, Marmot. The ravine that I told you about is just up ahead.”

  But the goblin didn’t need to tell us, we could already see for ourselves the obstacle that had appeared in front of us. A deep gap in the body of the earth—the ravine was overgrown with tall grass, as high as a man’s chest, with a stream swollen by the rain and babbling loudly—it must have been a truly formidable barrier for the attackers during the storming of the brigade’s fortifications.

  The light mist in the hollow of the ravine thickened, acquiring density and form and almost hiding the bottom. The walls were no longer quite as steep and abrupt as they had been before. In five hundred years the snow and the plants had smoothed them out.

  I didn’t even realize that everyone had fallen silent. No one said a single word. We simply stared through the increasing rain at the far side of the ravine, from where centuries ago hordes of orcs had come flooding across to confront four hundred men.

  “There must be a lot of bones down below,” said Honeycomb, breaking the silence. “You can see why a road like this was abandoned.”