forgotten about him.
“Your horse,” said Ell, holding out a bridle to Snoop.
“Thank you, but I place more faith in my own feet. I’ll walk home. Harold, can I see you for a moment? I need to have a word.”
Ell blocked his way.
“You’ll have plenty of time for talking. You’re going with us.”
“With you?”
“With us?” I gasped. “Why in the name of darkness should he go with us? That’s the last thing we need right now!”
“You and I are in complete agreement there, Harold. I also think your friend should be left here. Preferably buried under the pigsty. But Tresh Miralissa thinks otherwise.”
“Curses!” I exclaimed loudly. I didn’t really like the idea of traveling in the same group as Bass. But I definitely didn’t want him to be killed.
“It’s very simple, Master Bass,” said the elfess from the House of the Black Moon. “We simply cannot leave you here.”
“You’ll start gossiping,” Ell went on. “And we don’t want that.”
“I promise I’ll be as silent as the grave.”
“You men make lots of promises, but you don’t keep many of them. But you’re quite right; if you decide to stay, you’ll be exactly as silent as the grave.…”
No more explanations were required—the choice was a journey on horseback with us, or a crooked elfin blade in the throat.
“Harold! You say something to them!”
“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do,” I said, shaking my head regretfully. “I think it will be best for everyone if you go with us.”
Miralissa was right, even if Snoop didn’t blurt out the truth on his own, the count’s men could find him. To the elfin way of thinking, it was simpler just to kill him, but since I put in a word for him and he’d helped us, the dark elves made an exception.
“This is insane! It must have been the Nameless One who prompted me to get involved with your gang!” Bass said, and spat angrily, realizing that he had no way out and now he would have to share our journey with us. “And where are we going?”
“You don’t need to know that, man. Get into the saddle and keep your mouth shut. And if you get any ideas about trying to escape, remember—I’ll be right there beside you.”
Ell had taken a very great “liking” to my friend from the first moment they met.
“This is what I get for giving someone a helping hand!” the cardsharp exclaimed, still furious as he climbed up onto the horse. I must say, he did that rather clumsily.
“Don’t take it to heart, it could have been worse,” I consoled him.
Little Bee reached her muzzle out to me, looking for a dainty tidbit, but I didn’t have anything in my pockets and just shrugged.
“Here,” said Marmot, handing me an apple.
The horse gobbled down the treat and gave me a good-natured sideways glance, looking for more.
“Harold!” said Kli-Kli as he rode up to me, looking like a little hummock on the back of his huge black steed. “Do you think you could give me back my medallion?”
“Ah, of course.” I’d forgotten about Kli-Kli’s little knickknack. “Here. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” The goblin hung the trinket round his neck. “Right then, ready for the road?”
“No.”
“I understand,” the jester said with a laugh. “Nights spent out in the open air and gruel brewed up by Hallas aren’t what you like best, then?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer, because just then Deler appeared, cursing the green goblin to the heavens: “Kli-Kli! Was it you who took the last bottle of wine?”
“Harold, I think I’ll get started now,” the jester said hastily. “No, I didn’t take anything! What would I want with your Asmina Valley?”
“Then how do you know what it’s called?” the dwarf asked, squinting at him suspiciously.
“Oh, it just came to me.”
“Kli-Kli, stop … stop, I tell you! Ah, you thieving little squirt!”
We rode through the Festival Gates without running into any kind of trouble. The sleepy guards swung the gates open for us as obligingly as they could manage and let us out of the city, without asking a single question about the reasons for our hasty departure in the night.
The gold handed to the corporal worked better than any official charters with the seal of the city council.
We covered the distance between Ranneng and the Iselina in the next two days, galloping at a furious pace all the way, in order to put as much distance as possible between us and any pursuit sent out by Count Balistan Pargaid.
The main road we rode along was very busy. There were travelers and artisans hurrying to Ranneng and away from Ranneng, and strings of carts carrying all sorts of things to be sold. We came across a village about every league, so our squad didn’t have to spend the night in an open field.
Bass was gloomy. He had either Ell or Uncle behind him all the way. Luckily, my old friend didn’t think of trying to escape—he realized what the risks were. When I asked if Snoop was really going to go all the way to Hrad Spein with us, Miralissa said she would find somewhere to put him.
“There are many guard posts and fortresses on the border. He can wait there until we come back, and then he can go anywhere he wants.”
I didn’t tell Bass about what the elfess had decided. I don’t think he would have been too delighted by the news.
At five in the evening of the second day we reached the Iselina.
I caught sight of the glittering ribbon of the river when we were still in the forest—the sun was glinting off the water, and the reflections shone straight into my eyes between the trees. And the sight when we emerged into open space simply took my breath away.
Our group was standing on a low elevation, with the broad band of the river laid out in front of us. During our journey I had seen plenty of streams and rivers, both great and small. But none of them bore any comparison to the Iselina.
I was looking at the mother of all the northern rivers. Huge, wide, and deep, it began somewhere far off, where the streams flowing from the Mountains of the Dwarves came together to form a mighty hissing torrent that flowed on through the Forests of Zagraba and emptied into the Sea of Storms, away to the southeast.
We could see a large village on the road ahead. Not far from it the mighty ramparts of a castle towered up into the air.
“Marmot,” I said to the Wild Heart. “What settlement is that?”
The warrior gave me a rather strange look and replied: “Boltnik.”
“
“Yes.”
Everyone remembers the bloodbath at Boltnik that swallowed up a quarter of our army during the Spring War. The men were standing on the bank of the Iselina, waiting for the orcs’ storm troopers to start crossing. At the time no one knew that fifty leagues farther upstream, the Firstborn had broken through the human rearguard and driven the men back to Ranneng. Then they attacked those who were waiting for them at Boltnik from the rear.
The enemy from Zagraba pinned the men back against the river, and the far bank was black with the teeming hordes of orcish bowmen. Almost no one managed to escape from this encirclement; only a tiny number got away by water or broke out of the ring. When this happened, men realized that the elves had chosen the name of this river well—Iselina means “Black River.” But during those terrible days, the river was not black, it was red with the blood of men and the Firstborn.
Alistan did not lead our group into the village; we avoided it, leaving the white houses with red tiled roofs on
