him from behind, the crooked sword whistled through the air and severed the head of what had once been my friend from its body.
The head fell into the mud and rolled away. The body, with the arrows stuck in it, waved its remaining arm desperately from side to side, trying to catch one of us with the knife. The foul beast was still alive and dangerous.
Ell jumped across to the head and struck twice at the black eyes with a dagger drawn from the top of his boot. There was a sound like an eggshell breaking, the eyes burst, and the body twitched convulsively once again before it collapsed into a puddle and lay still.
Wasting no time, the elf went across to the body and, using his s’kash again, started dismembering it, cutting off the other arm and the legs. I was still standing there with my crossbow lowered when Ell handed me back my knife. I took it warily, looked it over, and put it back in the scabbard. There wasn’t a single drop of blood on the blade.
“I never did like him.” Ell’s yellow eyes glinted.
“What
“One kind of ghoul created from someone who is dead. A faithful servant. They think, talk, eat, and they remember everything that happened to them before they died. It is almost impossible to tell them apart from ordinary people. Ask Miralissa if you want to know more.”
“How did you find us?”
“I told you, I never did like him,” Ell repeated. “Catch your horse and let’s go. The rain’s getting worse.”
I whistled to Little Bee. It was a trick that Kli-Kli taught me. The horse was still frightened and she squinted at the dead man lying in the puddle, but she came to me when I called.
“Thank you,” I said as I climbed into the saddle. “You saved my skin today.”
“I hope I do not have to feel sorry about it,” said Ell.
“What are you talking about?”
“I can see how you look at Miralissa.”
“Isn’t that my business?” I asked softly.
“When it touches dark elves then it is not
I looked at Ell and said:
“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t do that to her.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I hope our conversation will remain confidential.”
“Of course,” I said drily. “I promise.”
He didn’t answer, just nodded. I rode round the Soulless One’s body and didn’t look back once all the way to our group.
12
The Judgment Of Sagra
After Upper Otters, the weather started to improve. The gods in the heavens snapped their fingers and in a single night a strong wind drove the clouds away. The sun peeped out in the morning and started drying out the land with its warm caress, freeing it of all that superfluous moisture. I was finally able to take off my cloak and revel in the glorious weather.
According to Alistan Markauz, our detachment was due to reach the Border Kingdom before that evening. With a bit of luck and some help from the gods, we ought to come across one of the garrisons—in the Borderland no one would refuse us shelter for the night.
After the incident with Bass, Miralissa spent a long time asking me questions about what had happened. The elfess nodded knowingly and exchanged glances with Kli-Kli, who rode up to join us, but she didn’t make any comments; at the end of my story all she said was:
“As you humans say, you were born under a lucky star.”
And that was the end of the conversation. Neither she nor the goblin condescended to explain anything to me.
I waited for the right moment and approached Ell. The elf gave me a surprised look, but waited for me to start the conversation.
“Ell … I…”
“Don’t bother, Harold, your gratitude is not that important to me.”
“That wasn’t actually what I wanted to talk about,” I said, embarrassed.
“No?” A quick glance. “Well, now you intrigue me. Go on.”
“You’re from the House of the Black Rose.… I know this question might surprise you, but do you know anything about Djok the Winter-Bringer?”
“The prince-killer? Every child in our house knows about him. A magnificent story to encourage hatred of the human race.” He grinned and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious.
“What happened to him?”
“He was executed.”
“That’s what you tell outsiders, but what really happened to him?”
“You are an outsider yourself,” Ell replied harshly, then he paused and asked: “Why are you so interested in this?”
“I had a dream in which he wasn’t executed. At least, not in the way that was planned.”
“If you’ve had a dream, then why are you asking me?” the yellow-eyed elf asked. “That young lad was lucky; some soft-hearted individual slit his throat from ear to ear.”
The elf ran his fingers across his own throat to show how it was done.
“We don’t like to go into that story very much. Djok managed to slip through the fingers of our executioners just before the actual execution. A lucky bastard. We never found out who dispatched him into the darkness. There was a rumor that one of the orcs crept in and played a joke on us. But I don’t really believe that.”
“And…”
“Harold, it was more than six hundred years ago, there have been so many generations, and you want me to remember the old men’s stories? I don’t know any more than that.”
“I understand … but couldn’t you tell straightaway that he wasn’t guilty?”
“You know the saying anger clouds the judgment? You humans looked for … er, what do you call it … a scapegoat. Why bother trying to find the guilty party if the elf was killed by Djok’s arrow? Or an arrow very much like his? Your people had a choice. Either try to find the real killer and get involved in a war, or sacrifice one human life and forget the whole thing. Your king at the time acted wisely—the scapegoat was found, the arrow was shown in court, there was a confession, even if it was beaten out of him, witnesses…”
He pulled a wry face.
“My ancestors were no better, grief and fury clouded their reason, and we wanted revenge for what happened in Ranneng, even if the man accused wasn’t guilty. We tried to question him further, but after your beatings and our tortures … He just kept begging us not to beat him … At the time he had been found guilty; it was only three months later that they started digging deeper and discovered it was a different archer and Djok was somewhere else at the time.”
“A different archer?”
“You people don’t like to talk about your mistakes any more than we elves do. He confessed. Voluntarily. Came and told us how it all happened, where he had been hiding. How he fired. The only thing he didn’t say was why he did it.”
“He?”
“The real killer.”
“Did no one think that he was simply a madman with nothing better to do?”
