Shadow Chaser tcos-2

by Алексей Пехов

  “Oh!” the jester said thoughtfully when he’d pondered my arguments. He glanced regretfully at the carriage. “I didn’t think about that.”

  “Now who’s the fool and who’s the wise man?”

  “You’re the fool, I’m the wise man. Even a boneheaded Doralissian can see that. By the way, we’ve arrived, that’s the manor over there.”

  The manor standing right on the very top of the hill looked about half the size of the king’s palace, but I couldn’t really see it properly from where we were standing. Most of the building was hidden by the thick crowns of the trees growing in the park around it.

  The private area was surrounded by a tall gray wall with quaint little steel figures all along the top. I wasn’t fooled by their appearance—first and foremost they were a barrier of spikes to prevent anyone climbing in over the wall. Their role as decoration was strictly secondary. And I had no doubt that after the spikes there would be dogs or garrinches or guards waiting for us inside. Maybe even all three of them.

  The steel gates were covered with images of birds. Birds flying, birds singing, and doing all sorts of things. When I looked closely at them I realized they were nightingales. So whoever lived in this nest of vipers was a nobleman from the House of Nightingale.

  “Impressive!” said Lamplighter, looking at the house appreciatively. “What do you think, Harold?”

  “Difficult.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Difficult to get out of.”

  “But you’re a master of your trade, aren’t you?”

  “Right … but that doesn’t make the job any easier. Where are Marmot and Egrassa?”

  “Probably pretending to be trees, and that’s why we can’t see them,” Kli-Kli suggested. “They’re hiding, Harold, hiding. Or do you think that two handsome fellows walking round and round a house wouldn’t attract any attention?”

  “Well, if they’re hiding, you can look for them. I’m not going to play hide-and-seek.”

  Naturally, the goblin didn’t find anyone. If an elf doesn’t want to be seen, then he isn’t. And the Wild Hearts, especially their scouts, have always been famous for their camouflage and their ability to hide even where it seems impossible. Marmot and Egrassa emerged like two phantoms from the clumps of bushes growing along the wall surrounding the mansion. I would never have thought that two sturdy warriors could have been sitting in there.

  “You’re late.” That was how Marmot greeted us.

  “I should think so. Even a h’san’kor would have trouble finding you!” I said, handing the joyfully squealing ling to his master. “Have you found out who the house belongs to?”

  “No. How about you?”

  “No,” Eel replied. “Is everything quiet?”

  “As a graveyard. At least, no one has left the house through these gates, but about an hour before dawn seven men went in. You’re welcome to use our little lair. It’s good cover, very convenient, and it’s not visible from the road. There’s a perfect view of the gates.”

  “Good luck,” taciturn Eel said to the others, and started walking toward the bushes. He slipped in through a narrow gap and the branches immediately hid him from view.

  “Come on, Harold. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb hanging around here,” Kli-Kli said.

  I followed him in, comforting myself with the thought that until Miralissa found out whose house this was and she and Alistan came up with some way of getting into it, there was nothing for me to do. It made no difference whether I lay around here or sat around at the inn. True, there was no pestiferous Kli-Kli at the inn, but Miralissa was there. I would have been happier to be with the elf than an annoying clown. Ever since Valder’s ghost saved me from the red flyer in Hargan’s Wasteland, the dark elfess had been eyeing me with great interest. I hadn’t told her or anyone else that I had the spirit of a dead archmagician living in my head. And after what happened at the wasteland I had pretended to be a complete fool, claiming I had no idea what had happened or how I’d been saved.

  During the night Marmot and Egrassa had created a magnificent shelter. If you looked at the bushes from the road, you couldn’t tell they’d been touched, but inside there was a cozy green lair with trampled branches and grass, quite big enough for two men. Of course, there were four of us, not two, but Kli-Kli was not very big, and I huddled up a bit and we fitted into the observation post quite comfortably.

  Lamplighter immediately stretched out on the ground, picked a stalk of grass, put it in his teeth, and started staring through the branches at the clouds drifting across the sky. A fine occupation for a man who wants to fall asleep.

  Eel set to work observing the gates leading to the house and Kli-Kli and I were the only ones left suffering from boredom. The fidgety goblin couldn’t sit still for a moment, and the longer we stayed in our hideaway, the more fidgety he got.

  The goblin counted the clouds floating past, too, but he soon got fed up with that, and less than five minutes later he started squirming about, kicked me in the side, and crawled over to Eel.

  “Nobody?” Kli-Kli hissed curiously.

  “No,” the Garrakian replied tersely without taking his eyes off the gates.

  “A-a-a-a,” the goblin drawled in disappointment, then kicked me in the side again and went back to counting the clouds, taking no notice of the less than kindly glance I gave him.

  Ten minutes later the whole business was repeated. He kicked me in the side, crawled over to Eel, asked his question, got the answer, said “A-a-a-a,” kicked me in the side.

  When he started for the third time I couldn’t take any more.

  “Kli-Kli, lie down, or I won’t answer for myself!”

  “I’m just going over to Eel for a moment.”

  A kick in the side.

  I flew into a fury and swung my foot to kick him back hard, but somehow he managed to avoid it. He giggled in delight and stuck out his tongue. But I could wait for when he came creeping back!

  “Nobody?”

  “No.”

  “A-a-a-a … Oi!”

  Just as Kli-Kli was about to come back to his place Eel pinned him to the ground with one hand, without even looking at him.

  “Stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve annoyed Harold enough already.”

  “But it’s all in fun!” said Kli-Kli.

  The warrior didn’t answer him and the jester took mortal offense. He called me a sneak, but he didn’t dare go against Eel, and stayed where he was.

  The time dragged out endlessly. Mumr chewed his grass stalk. Kli-Kli fell into a doze, exhausted by doing nothing; my side went numb from lying on the ground, so I turned over onto the other one. But Eel sat, as still as he had been two hours earlier, watching the gates. There was no movement or any signs of life. The gates had to be very well guarded, since a member of one of Ranneng’s militant noble brotherhoods lived there, but we couldn’t see any guards.

  Just as the third hour was coming to an end Eel sat up sharply and chuckled.

  “At last!”

  I started and carefully moved aside a branch to look out. Two guards, evidently from the personal bodyguard of the owner of the house (they had emblems of some kind sewn to their uniforms, but I couldn’t make them out from that distance) were hastily opening the heavy gates.

  “What’s happening?” asked Kli-Kli, yawning widely as he woke up from his doze.

  “The nest of cockroaches is stirring,” Mumr muttered. “Harold, squeeze up a bit, I can’t see a thing.”

  Horsemen came riding out of the gates. One, three, five of them. And Paleface, may the darkness take him!

  “Rolio’s with them!” I whispered.

  “Where?” Kli-Kli almost tumbled out of the bushes straight onto the road to see the killer I’d told him so much about.

  It would have been no laughing matter if the jester had ended up under the hooves of the horses. But Eel was alert: He grabbed Kli-Kli’s leg and pulled him back into the b
ushes.

  “Relax, lad.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “That’s Paleface. The rider dressed all in black,” I explained. My hands were itching to let the killer have a crossbow bolt, but unfortunately I didn’t have my weapon with me. “Where are they going?”

  “Ah, universal darkness! They’ll get away!” Eel exclaimed. “I swear on a dragon, they’ll get away!”

  “And what if he has the Key?” I asked, pouring oil on the flames.

  The horsemen rode off.

  “Mumr, after them, quickly!” Eel ordered.

  “But they’ve got horses!”

  “And you’ve got legs! They won’t gallop through the city, you can see they’re riding slowly. Try to find out where they’re going.”

  “All right,” said Lamplighter, spitting out his grass stalk. “I’ll try.”

  “We have to let Markauz and Miralissa know,” said Eel, standing up and emerging from the bushes. “We still have a chance of intercepting them at the city gates.”

  “There are a lot of gates,” Kli-Kli said doubtfully. “We’d better hurry.”

  But we never got to the inn. Or rather, we weren’t allowed to. As soon as we reached the street we had walked up a few hours earlier, two men blocked our way. They were dressed in the modest clothes of craftsmen, with sullen faces and cold eyes. The lads looked very confident, and they had very good reason to be—each of them was holding a naked sword.

  “It looks as though we were spotted at the manor after all,” I muttered, taking my dagger out of its sheath.

  A dagger against a sword is like a crossbow against a ballista. I couldn’t speak for Eel, but I knew they would carve me into little pieces without the slightest trouble.

  “Look behind us!” Kli-Kli squeaked.

  Six men were approaching us from the rear. They were still quite a long way off, but each of them had a crossbow. And then I noticed that they hadn’t come out of the manor grounds—the gates were still closed. They had arrived in a huge carriage.

  “They’re not Nightingales! They’re the Nameless One’s henchmen! We’ve been followed!”

  Eel gave a low growl and pulled out his daggers.

  “Harold, don’t stand there like a fool!” Kli-Kli hissed as he watched the men with crossbows approaching. “Have you got your bag of magic bits and pieces?”

  “No, I left it with my crossbow and long dagger.”

  The goblin groaned. “That’s the most foolish thing you could possibly have done!”

  I didn’t argue with that.

  Then suddenly I had a bright idea. I reached for my trump card—a magical vial full of potion. When it broke it should produce a flash, a loud boom, and smoke.

  An absolutely useless little toy really, but I had got it for nothing, and I didn’t want to just throw away a magical vial. I’d never had a chance to try it out. I’d stopped carrying the flash-bang in my bag in order not to confuse it with the other vials, and after I put in the special pocket on my sleeve I’d forgotten all about it, because it weighed next to nothing.

  “Close your eyes,” I yelled to my comrades, and flung the vial down at the swordsmen’s feet. There was a bright flash and a loud bang and a section of the street was hidden by thick, swirling white smoke. One of the men with swords cried out in fright.

  “Stay behind me!” Eel ordered, and dashed at our stunned enemies in spite of their swords.

  One of them was sitting on the ground in the smoke and rubbing his eyes in confusion. The lad had forgotten all about the sword that was lying a few steps away from him. The other one proved less timid. He swung rather clumsily and tried to slice Eel’s head off, but Eel ducked under his sword, blocking it with his left dagger, and thrust his right dagger into the swordsman’s neck.

  The first lad was still sitting in the street rubbing his eyes, so I swung my foot and kicked him hard on the jaw. The would-be killer’s teeth clattered and he collapsed on the ground.

  “Take the sword!” Eel told me as he picked up the sword of the man he had killed.

  I handle a sword about as well as a baker handles the wheel of a royal frigate, but in this particular case I didn’t really have time to explain that to the Garrakian. As soon as the men with crossbows saw what had happened to their comrades, they broke into a run. Unfortunately my magical trick hadn’t impressed them, and they were running toward us, not away. The most impatient of them fired at us and the bolt scraped across the road dangerously close to Eel’s foot.

  “They want to take us alive!” he growled.

  “Follow me!” Kli-Kli squeaked, realizing that a spot where the air is filled with screaming crossbow bolts is not the right place for any respectable goblin to be.

  The jester disappeared into the thick white smoke, I darted after him, and Eel covered our rear.

  After ten steps, we broke out of the wall of smoke covering the street. The men with crossbows were firing without worrying about taking us alive anymore. The only reason our skins weren’t full of holes was that thick wall of smoke. One bolt whizzed past my head and thudded into the side of the wagon with the props under its wheels. Kli-Kli wanted to take a ride, didn’t he? It looked like his dream was about to come true.

  “Harold, what was that stinking muck you tossed on the ground?” Eel asked me.

  “A mere trifle that saved us a little unpleasantness! Stop, Kli-Kli!” I said, grabbing the goblin by the scruff of the neck. “Into the cart?”

  “Don’t be a fool!”

  “Ah, but I am! In you go, wise man.”

  Without bothering to ask any questions, Eel tossed the protesting goblin into the cart. He realized that we couldn’t outrun the crossbow bolts. Another few seconds and our hides wouldn’t be worth a bent farthing. I jumped in after Kli-Kli.

  “Harold, I hope you know what you’re doing!” he said. I think it was the first time I’d seen the jester frightened. Even during the attack on the royal palace by the followers of the Nameless One, or at Vishki, or in Hargan’s Wasteland, His Emerald Skinship had never turned that pale lettuce color.

  With mighty blows Eel knocked out the wooden chocks that were holding the wagon in place, and it started rolling downhill. The cool-headed Garrakian even gave it a push, although that was quite unnecessary. The slope was steep enough, and our elegant vehicle was soon traveling at a terrifying speed.

  “I-I-I th-think th-this was a b-bad id-deaa!” Kli-Kli stammered in fright as the wheels of the cart skipped and bounced over the stones of the street. He clung to the side of the cart with both hands, his eyes wide with terror as the houses rushed past.

  People walking along the street jumped out of the way to avoid being crushed under the wheels, and rewarded us with choice obscenities and directions into the darkness.

  Another bolt thudded into the back of the cart.

  “Keep down!” Eel yelled, trying to shout above the rumbling of the wheels and the wind roaring in our ears.

  We kept down. A deadly rain of crossbow bolts started falling on the back of the cart. Either there were a lot more pursuers than we thought or they were virtuoso marksmen. Not many of the king’s soldiers could fire and reload as fast as that.

  But even so, Kli-Kli stuck his head up, looked ahead, and exclaimed, “Oi!”

  At that moment either of the goblin’s eyes could have swallowed the moon. I was intrigued and decided I wanted to know what the wise man’s “Oi!” signified.

  Sad to say, the street ran on for another hundred yards and then made a sharp turn to the left. So there was an extremely unpleasant little surprise in store for us—our wagon was hurtling straight toward the wall of a house.

  I looked back—our pursuers were seriously outpaced by the insane speed of our wagon, but they were still rushing after us, as stubborn as imperial dogs that have scented their prey.

  “Let’s jump for it!” I yelled.

  The wagon was moving at an incredible pace, and if we were foolish enough to stay in it, we would
end up smeared across the wall.

  “If we jump, we could hurt ourselves!” Kli-Kli objected.

  “If we don’t jump, we’re certainly going to hurt ourselves! Jump on two!”

  “One…”

  It was too late. The wagon caught up with the wall, or the wall caught up with the wagon, I don’t know which.

  We slammed into it.

  The impact was appalling. Kli-Kli, who was balancing on the side of the cart like a tightrope walker, waiting for me to say “two,” was thrown off into the air. He was lucky—unlike the jester, Eel and I were inside the cart.

  When we hit, the world went dark. I thought a couple of rabid giants had come running down from the Desolate Lands, especially to dance the djanga on my ribs. I still don’t know how my ribs weren’t smashed. My ears were ringing, there were stars in my eyes, my left side was a solid mass of pain, and my head felt like it was made of lead.

  I don’t know how long I lay there like that. Maybe it was a second, maybe an entire age. The stars stubbornly refused to disappear and their crazy spinning was beginning to make me feel sick. And even worse, after the blow I could hardly even think, and only in short bursts.

  After that it was like I saw everything that happened from the outside.

  Kli-Kli was leaning down over me. The goblin looked completely unhurt, apart from a graze on his cheek and a tear in his cloak.

  “Harold! Come on, Harold! Darkness take you! Get up! Get up!”

  Why was he shouting like that? I’m not deaf. And where have all these planks come from? Ah yes! The cart!

  “Get up, Dancer in the Shadows! They’re almost here!”

  May a h’san’kor eat his tongue! What is this jester pestering me about now? All I need is to lie down for half an hour, and I’ll be as good as new. Let him go and pester Eel instead. Yes, I wonder how he’s getting on.

  I had to make a real effort to look away from Kli-Kli, who was trying to tell me something, and turn my head toward the spot where I thought the warrior must be.