a torch.
“Hey, you! Do you hear me? Open the door!” Honeycomb shouted, straining his lungs to the limit.
“Stop yelling! Just a moment!” said Hallas, moving the bolt to open the door and let Honeycomb and Eel into the room. Some of Algert Dalli’s soldiers peeped in at us from the corridor.
“What happened in here?”
“Some mountain-climber tried to get through the window and I swelped him with Deler’s ax, to teach him not to go disturbing decent folks at night by climbing in their windows,” Hallas muttered.
The window was open, Deler’s bloody ax was standing by the wall, and there was a severed hand lying on the floor. Someone had just lost the end of his left arm.
It turned out that Hallas had woken up in the night and taken a walk to answer a gnomish call of nature. When he came back to the room, he had decided to light up his pipe, but he opened the window so that the room wouldn’t get smoky. Literally a minute later a hand had appeared from outside, followed by another. Hallas had quite correctly decided that normal people sleep at that time of night, and don’t go climbing up sheer walls like spiders, so he’d picked up the dwarf’s ax and hit the hand that was nearest to him.
“And then you lot started yelling,” the gnome concluded.
“Honeycomb, let’s go and check,” said Eel, making for the door.
“What for?” Hallas asked in amazement. “After a tumble from this height, he’s not just going to get up and walk away.”
“We’ll find out who it was.”
Eel, Honeycomb, and the guardsmen left. I cautiously stuck my head out the window and looked down. Just as I thought, there was no body on the ground. Soldiers were running round the castle courtyard with torches, but I could tell that they hadn’t spotted anyone, only heard the screaming.
“Harold, is this Paleface’s?” Kli-Kli asked, holding the severed hand squeamishly by one finger.
“How should I know? It looks like his, the fingers are slim, like Rolio’s, but I can only say for certain if I see the assassin himself.”
“I see,” said Kli-Kli, casually tossing the hand out the window.
“And what in darkness made you take my ax, couldn’t you have used your mattock?” Deler grumbled, carefully wiping down the terrible blade with a little rag.
“You’re so possessive, Deler,” Hallas said resentfully. “A real dwarf. All your beardless tribe are the same.”
“Just look who’s talking,” Deler retorted. “When it comes to taking what belongs to others, you’re the champions!”
“We take what belongs to others? We do?” said the gnome, starting to get heated. “Who was it that took the books? Who was it that stole the books of magic, you tell me that?”
“What makes you think they’re yours? They’re ours, we just lent them to you for a while!”
Hallas started to choke on his indignation. The gnome was still searching for an adequate reply when Eel and Honeycomb came back. Alistan followed them in.
“Not a thing,” Honeycomb said with a wry grimace. “No body, no blood, as if there was never anybody there. The guards have combed the entire courtyard—not a trace.”
“Have you got the Key, thief?” Alistan Markauz asked.
“Yes, milord.”
“Good,” the count said with a nod, and left.
“Let’s get some sleep,” sighed Hallas, who was feeling chilly, and he closed the window. “We’ve got another day in the saddle tomorrow, and I still want a good night’s rest. Deler, lock the door and put out the torch.”
“So I’m your servant now, am I?” the dwarf grumbled, but he closed the door, after first telling Eel: “You wake us up in the morning.”
He lowered the oak beam and stuck the torch into the sandbox.
After a few minutes of peace and quiet, I heard Kli-Kli’s voice through the darkness.
“Harold, are you asleep?”
“What do you want?”
“I was just thinking, Paleface will stop bothering you now, right?”
“Maybe. That’s if it was him, of course.”
“Well, who else?”
“Listen, you guys,” Hallas hissed. “Let’s get some sleep, follow Deler’s good example.”
I could hear the sound of quiet snoring coming from the ginger-haired dwarf’s bed.
“All right, all right,” Kli-Kli whispered.
I closed my eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. Sagot! Paleface had almost reached me tonight!
“Harold, are you asleep?”
“Now what?” I sighed.
“Tell me, what do you think? Where has Balistan Pargaid gone now?”
“You’ll have to ask him that.”
“Jut shut up, will you?” Hallas howled.
“What are you yelling at, Beard-Face? Let me sleep,” Deler muttered without waking up, and turned over onto his other side.
“I’m not yelling, they’re the ones who won’t let me sleep,” the gnome muttered. “Kli-Kli, shut up!”
“All right, I won’t say a word,” the goblin whispered hastily.
I yawned and closed my eyes.
“Harold, are you asleep?” the whispering voice asked again.
Will he ever calm down? I won’t say a word now, just to spite him.
“Harold?
Hallas groaned and broke into a string of choice abuse in a mixture of gnomish and human language. “Kli-Kli, one more word, and I’ll lose control.”
“But I can’t get to sleep.”
“Then count something!”
“What?”
“Mammoths!” the gnome exclaimed furiously.
“All right,” the jester sighed. “The first mammoth jumps over the wall.… The second mammoth jumps over the wall.… The third mammoth jumps over the wall.… The fourth mammoth jumps over the wall.…”
Hallas started groaning again.
“The twenty-fifth mammoth jumps over the wall…,” Kli-Kli continued. “The twen-ty sev-enth mammoth jumps … over … the wall.…”
Something went whistling through the air above me and Kli-Kli gasped in fright.
“Why are you throwing your boots, Hallas?” the jester asked indignantly.
“You know why! If you don’t shut up, you’ll spend the night in the corridor!”
Kli-Kli sighed, turned over on the floor, and stopped talking. I was absolutely certain that the goblin had thought up some sly trick. But the minutes passed, and he didn’t make a sound.
I managed to get to sleep after all. Perhaps I was just tired after the long day, or perhaps the sleeping goblin’s snoring sounded like a lullaby.…
We left Algert Dalli’s castle at dawn, when the waking sun had just painted the edge of the sky a pale pink. Kli-Kli was yawning desperately and muttering sleepily, looking as if he would tumble off his saddle at any moment if someone didn’t support him.
At that early hour of the morning Milord Algert Dalli, his wife, and his daughter came in person to see us off and wish us success. Oro Gabsbarg was also there. I don’t know what Miralissa and Alistan Markauz had told the count, but we were given an escort of forty mounted men under the command of a certain Milord Fer, who turned out to be Dalli’s illegitimate son. Kli-Kli told me that in the Border Kingdom the attitude toward bastards was completely different from in Valiostr. As long as a man was a good warrior, it didn’t matter what blood ran in his veins. Fer was about three years older than Lady Alia and he looked like his father—short and sturdy.
Milord Algert had generously flung open the doors of his armory for us, and the castle’s three armorers had
