“So shall I just throw it away, then? You said yourselves, we need some bait,” the little green urchin said, blinking in confusion.
“But not a dead cat! Use your head, Kli-Kli!”
“Wait, Lamplighter,” said Uncle, licking his spoon. “Not risking anything, are we?”
“Only our stomachs,” put in Hallas, trying not to look at the poor creature’s mangy little corpse. “Tell him, Deler.”
“Hallas is right,” the dwarf confirmed.
“Don’t despair, Kli-Kli, we’ll have your bait on a hook in a moment.”
“Hooray! Thanks, Uncle!” Kli-Kli exclaimed, almost dropping the cat in our pot of gruel.
This sacrilegious treatment of Hallas’s cooking almost gave him a stroke, and the goblin hastily cleared off to the riverbank and waited for the sergeant there. I decided to take a look at how this strange kind of fishing would go and got up from the “table” to join the fishermen.
Without the slightest sign of squeamishness, Uncle took hold of the dead cat by the tail, attached it to his homemade tackle, twirled it round like a sling, and flung it into the river. There was a loud splash and circles ran out across the water.
“Now what? Now there’ll be a bite, right?” asked the goblin, jumping up and down in his impatience.
“Maybe now, maybe in a little while. Here, you take the rope, wind it round your hand, and when you feel a tug, you tug on it, too,” Uncle said gravely, handing Kli-Kli the tackle.
The goblin sat down on the bank and watched the calm, smooth surface of the water in which the first stars were already reflected.
“Listen, Uncle,” I whispered quietly to the sergeant as we walked back to the campfire, leaving Kli-Kli on his own. “I can understand Kli-Kli. But you ought to know how hard it is to catch anything with a half-rotten cat.”
Uncle chuckled. “Yes, I do know.”
“Then why…”
“Kli-Kli’s just like a child. Goblins mature a lot later than we people do. Let him relax and get a bit of rest. The gods only know what an effort it costs him to be a jester all the time. Over there on the other side of the river is the Borderland, and none of us will have any time for rest there.”
“Is it that bad?”
“Well, of course, the Borderland isn’t the Desolate Lands, but orcs can appear at the most unexpected moments. The Firstborn regularly send punitive squads into our lands, and we’ll have to keep our wits about us, otherwise we won’t stay alive for long. We’ve already lost two men.… Curses! What sort of sergeant am I, if I wasn’t able to keep them safe?”
“A good sergeant, Uncle. You’re not to blame for the deaths of Tomcat and Loudmouth.” That was the only answer I could give him.
“Forget it,” he sighed. “I’m too old for expeditions like this. I should have collected the money I’ve earned and settled down in my own little tavern ages ago. And when we get this job finished, that’s just what I’ll do.”
“You said the same thing when we got back from the last expedition,” chuckled Honeycomb, who had overheard us. “A leopard can never change his spots!”
“You hold your tongue, kid! I’m still the sergeant around here,” Uncle rebuked him good-naturedly. “How could I leave you thickheads all on your own?”
And that put an end to the conversation.
There was a fresh scent coming off the water and the stars were lighting up one by one in the sky. The Wild Hearts were laying their traveling blankets on the grass, getting ready to go to sleep.
“So where are we going, then?” Bass asked, stuffing his folded-up jacket under his head.
“You just sleep, man,” chuckled Ell. “When we get there, I’ll be the first to tell you.”
“If it’s the Borderland, I’d like a chance to leave a few offspring behind and draw up a will.”
“Your friend’s very droll, Harold. Maybe we should make him our second jester?” Marmot chuckled. “My dear man, you were told—sleep and don’t worry about a thing.”
“I’m sleeping,” Snoop muttered, and closed his eyes.
Ell took another close look at him and went off into the darkness—to stand the first watch.
“A bite! A bite! I swear by the great shaman Tre-Tre, I’ve got a bite,” the jester yelled.
The goblin’s shrill howls battered at my ears, driving away sleep. I unglued my eyes and swore violently. The stars were still shining in the heavens, and dawn was not yet kindling in the east. The grass, the blankets, and our clothes were all covered with a fine diamond dust of dew. I shuddered from the cold as I emerged from sleep— during the night my clothes had soaked up the moisture.
The willows were motionless shadows against the background of the sky and the fading stars. Beside one of the trees a very familiar little figure, dressed in a cloak and pointed cap, was jumping up and down.
“A bite! Word of honor, a bite!” he yelled. “Help me! I’ve got a bite!”
“Ah, drop dead!” I said, and dove back under the blanket.
The others who were woken up felt the same way. Hallas, who had propped himself up on one elbow and was watching the goblin perform his crazy dance, growled in fury.
“Shut up, Kli-Kli!” Mumr advised him, without opening his eyes. “It’s not morning yet.”
“Why can’t you understand? I’ve got a bite! Honest, I’m not lying! Come and look for yourselves! Come quick! I can’t pull it out!”
“Uncle,” Deler said from underneath the hat tilted forward across his face. “You started this whole business, you go and see what kind of bite our horse-shit merchant has got. And shut him up!”
“Quick, quick! The rope’s breaking!”
“Curse the moment when I decided to teach a goblin to catch fish!” the sergeant sighed. He got up off the ground, pulled on his leather jacket, and tramped off toward Kli-Kli, who was going wild.
“Uncle, look! I’ve caught a fish!”
No, this is just too much! I’ll never get back to sleep now!
“Harold, are you going over to Kli-Kli?” Bass growled.
“Why?”
“Give him a good kick for me,” Snoop said, and turned over onto his other side.
I gazed at him enviously—my old friend had always been hard to wake up.
“Let’s go and take a look,” growled Honeycomb, getting to his feet.
A tattered blanket of mist lay across the smooth, undisturbed surface of the river. The goblin’s yells and howls echoed far across the water.
“Harold! Harold! Look! I caught it! It almost pulled me into the water! Harold, I caught it!”
The rope, stretched as tight as a bowstring, was jerking convulsively. The quick-witted goblin had done the right thing by winding the free end of his tackle several times around the trunk of the nearest willow.
“Almost pulled you in, you say?” Uncle pulled on the line with the gesture of an experienced angler. “Oh, he’s well hooked! And big, too! Honeycomb, come and help!”
The sergeant and the big, beefy soldier grunted as they started hauling the line in. “He’s fighting, the swine!” Honeycomb grunted, when a sharp tug from under the water almost pulled him off his feet.
The hauling-in of the unknown prize went on for a full hour. By that time the excited howling of our would-be fisherman had woken even Bass, and everyone was standing behind Honeycomb and making suggestions about what the jester could have caught with a dead cat.
“He must have hooked a water sprite,” said Hallas, struggling to get his pipe to light. “Or a water nymph.”
“Or maybe the king of the krakens?” Deler laughed as he helped Honeycomb. “You’re a great one for making things up, Lucky.”
“You ignorant bonehead!” the gnome retorted. “What kind of fish is it that takes an hour to pull out of the water? Look, it’s not even thrashing its tail and it’s not giving up for a moment. It’s got to be a water nymph!”
“Well, the idea of a nymph is nonsense, of course, but it could be some kind of river monster,” Marmot said with a yawn.
“And what would you know, scholar? Have you ever seen one?” Hallas seemed to really like the idea of seeing a naked maiden.
