Almost all the inhabitants of the village were there, and many of them were holding pitchforks, axes, scythes, flails, or clubs.
“Oi!” the jester squealed quietly.
I immediately looked back—the road was blocked off by two wagons. Very smart.
“What is the problem?” Alistan Markauz shouted.
The man we had seen with the ax stepped forward out of the crowd.
“We don’t want any trouble!”
“We are leaving the village, let us through!”
“Gladly, but first throw down your weapons and give us the horses!”
“What!” roared Hallas, waving his mattock in the air. “No gnome hands over his weapon to a pack of mangy, stinking peasants. Never!”
The crowd began buzzing threateningly and moving toward us.
“We’ll break through,” said Alistan Markauz, striking his horse on the hindquarters with the flat of his sword.
The massive warhorse bounded forward at the men and flattened the ones who were at the front. The sword flashed, repulsing a blow from a flail. The peasants howled and ran in all directions.
I set Little Bee moving forward, trying not to fall behind the others. Our group sliced through the peasants like a hot knife through butter. Those who were too slow to jump aside were trampled.
One lad there almost managed to stick a pitchfork in my side. But Hallas split his head open with his mattock before I even had time to feel afraid. A second later, I had broken out of the crowd, desperately pounding my heel against Little Bee’s sides and leaning down low on her neck.
The menacing cries were left behind and we hurtled along the line of gloomy gray houses, keen to get out of this cursed village as quickly as possible. What had gotten into them? I wondered. There was a kind of crossroads ahead of us, with about fifteen men standing directly in our path. Unlike the peasants, though, these men were armed with lances and bows. And they were dressed a lot better, too—in wool and steel.
Alistan set his horse hurtling to the left, past the lances held out toward him. Miralissa managed to burn up one of our enemies with a spell. While the rest of them were blinking their eyes and yelling in fear, our group darted past after Alistan. I was galloping along last but one, immediately after Hallas, and I saw the sharp tips of the lances flash by just five inches from my face. Little Bee reared up on her hind legs and whinnied. It was a miracle that I wasn’t thrown out of the saddle into the mud.
“Oh, bravo!” roared Bass, when he saw that the road to the left was already blocked off by men with lances.
With an effort, I managed to make Little Bee follow Snoop’s horse. The two of us would have to break through together. Now we were galloping in the opposite direction from our comrades. I heard the twang of bowstrings behind me, and one of the arrows whistled past just above my ear and bit into the hindquarters of Bass’s horse, which was galloping ahead of me. It reared up and threw its rider to the ground.
“Take my hand!” I shouted, leaning down in the saddle as I dashed up to him.
Snoop grabbed hold of my hand and jumped; I tossed him up onto Little Bee behind me and he clung on to me like a leech.
“We have to get out of this place! Move!”
I didn’t need to be asked twice. Arrows whistled through the air again, but this time they missed. We galloped the entire length of the village without coming across anyone at all from our side or the other.
I only pulled up Little Bee when Upper Otters was far behind us, hidden behind the curtain of rain.
“Unfriendly fellows, why were they so upset with us?”
“We could go back and ask them,” said Bass, jumping down off Little Bee.
“We have to find the others.”
“In this rain? You won’t even notice them until you trip over them.”
“And what do you suggest?”
“I’d make a run for it, if we weren’t so deep in the Borderland. But you can’t get far on your own here.”
I dismounted from Little Bee and turned toward him:
“You’re wrong, we have to find the others as soon as possible. The village is over that way, we have to circle round until we come across the group.”
“Two of us on one horse?” he said, turning round and looking thoughtfully in the direction of Upper Otters.
And that was when I saw it.
Two arrows were sticking out of Bass’s back. Shafts as thick as a finger, with white flights—one was stuck right under his left shoulder blade, and the other was a lot lower and farther to the right. The heart and the liver. Nobody lives with wounds like that. But Snoop didn’t seem to feel any pain or know that the arrows were there, and there wasn’t a single drop of blood on his clothes.
“So what do you think? Harold, I’m talking to you!”
“What?”
Something must have shown in my eyes, because Bass looked at me keenly and asked:
“What’s wrong, old friend?”
“You know,” I said warily, “those lads were good shots, after all.”
“Why do you say that? We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
“You’ve got two arrows sticking out of your back. Can’t you feel them?”
Keeping his eyes on me, he felt for one of the arrows behind his back and chuckled grimly.
“Darkness! If only you knew what bad timing this is,” Bass said with a crooked grin, and then, suddenly appearing right behind me, he punched me in the solar plexus.
Little Bee whinnied in fright and shied. I doubled over and fell down.
“All I had to do was watch you and tell the woman where you were,” Snoop said, with a pitiful note in his voice. “Now the Master will punish me.”
I felt my heart skip a beat.
Bass had no eyes anymore; where the pupils and irises ought to be, there was a sea of darkness. His eyes were like the eyes of the old man from the Master’s prison.
The knife sprang into my hand of its own accord and I sank the long blade into his belly, but he didn’t make a sound. I didn’t notice how he hit me, the pain just exploded in my chest, even under the chain mail, and I was on the ground again.
“You know,” Snoop said in a bored voice as he pulled my knife out of his stomach and weighed it in his hand, “Markun’s lads really did drop me in the water under the pier that day when I stole the money from you and For. I was unlucky. Being dead is very bad, Harold. But the Master brought me back to life, I became a Soulless One, and all I had to do was keep an eye on you. Well, now what are we going to do with you?”
Ell was standing no more than ten yards away from us, methodically shooting arrow after arrow into Bass.
It was pointless!
“I’m not that easy to kill,” Bass growled, flinging himself at the elf. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time!”
Ell threw his bow aside and took his s’kash off his shoulder. My knife was a lot shorter than this crooked blade, but that didn’t worry Snoop at all, and he pounced on the elf like a spring hurricane.
Heavy breathing, flashing blades, the clash of steel on steel. Bass lost his left arm from the elbow down, but he kept attacking. Not a drop of blood oozed from the stump, and his black eyes remained impassive.
I planted a crossbow bolt in the back of his head and it passed right through. But this didn’t upset the Soulless One at all.
I remembered what the Messenger had told Lafresa.
“Ell!” I shouted as I reloaded the crossbow. “His head! Cut off his head!”
Bass roared, turned away from his opponent, and came running at me with the knife. The elf dashed up to
