Without even listening to her, the elf was shooting arrow after arrow, aiming at the sound of the voice. It looked as if Egrassa was insane—why else would he be firing at an absolutely empty spot in the field? The arrows hummed through the air and stuck in the ground, the singing went on, and more and more of the soap bubbles kept appearing. One of the soldiers cried out in pain.
A sudden blow threw me to the ground and clattered my teeth together.
“Are you tired of living?” Eel roared.
The Garrakian was on the alert—he had pushed me out of the way of the shaman’s airborne curse just in time.
The elf’s next arrow stuck in midair, there was a shriek, and the chanting stopped. An orc wearing a strange- looking headdress appeared from out of nowhere, out of thin air, and fell to the ground.
“The illusion of invisibility!” Kli-Kli shouted.
With the death of the shaman, the soap bubbles instantly burst and disappeared.
The cabbage field no longer rang to the sound of clashing weapons. Everything had ended as suddenly as it had begun. I realized that we had won and by the whim of Sagot I was still alive.
“Easy, my friend, just two more stitches and I’ll be done,” said Eel as he deftly sewed up Lamplighter’s forehead with a crooked needle.
Mumr hissed and scowled, but he bore it. An orcish yataghan had caught Lamplighter on the forehead and sliced away a flap of skin. When the battle was over, the warrior’s face and clothes were completely covered in blood, and now the Garrakian was stitching the skin dangling over Lamplighter’s eyes back into place with woolen thread.
“Stop torturing me, Eel, I’ve lost enough blood already! Why don’t you call Miralissa?”
“She’s busy trying to save the men affected by the shaman’s spell,” said Eel, putting in another stitch. “And don’t worry about all the blood. It’s always like that with wounds on the face. It would be far more dangerous if they’d stabbed you in the stomach and it hadn’t bled at all.”
“Smart aleck…,” Mumr said, and scowled as Eel started tying off the thread. “Now there’ll be a scar.”
“They say they look well on a man.” Eel chuckled. “Deler, give me your Fury of the Depths.”
The dwarf stopped cleaning the blade of his battle-ax and handed the Garrakian his flask of dwarfish firewater. Eel moistened a rag and ruthlessly pressed it against Mumr’s forehead. Lamplighter howled as if he had sat on hot coals.
“Put up with it, if you don’t want the wound to fester.”
The Wild Heart nodded with his face contorted in pain and took the rag from the Garrakian.
“Are you wounded, thief?”
Milord Rat had taken off his helmet and was holding it in his hands. Naturally enough, the captain of the guard was concerned about my health. After all, Stalkon had instructed him to protect me, and today I had almost been dispatched to the light. A fine joke that would be, if Milord Alistan Markauz failed to carry out an assignment!
“I don’t think so,” I said apathetically.
The battle was over, but I still couldn’t get over the delirious fever that is born from the clash of swords. Kli- Kli and I were sitting on the ground beside Little Bee and looking at the trampled cabbage field, scattered with the bodies of orcs, men, and horses.
“You have blood on your face.”
Blood? Ah, yes! When Hallas blew the orc’s head off with his wonder-weapon, a few drops of blood had landed on me.
“Not mine, milord.”
“Here, wipe it off.” And he kindly handed me a clean piece of rag. “Well done for surviving, thief.”
I grinned sadly. I’d survived, all right, but others hadn’t been so lucky. An orcish arrow had killed Ell on the spot. Marmot would never feed Invincible again—he had been hit by the shaman’s bubbles, and killed. Honeycomb, too, had been hit by the bubble and now he was lying unconscious, at death’s door. Miralissa was trying to help him and three other warriors, but I wasn’t sure she could do anything.
The other detachment had also run into orcs, but there were far fewer of the Firstborn there, so Fer and his men had managed to deal with their enemies and come to help.
“They gave us a good mauling,” Fer said to Alistan.
“How many?”
“Eighteen killed, not counting your two men, milord. Hasal, how many wounded?”
The healer looked up from bandaging a casualty.
“Slightly wounded—almost everyone. Four seriously. They chopped off Servin’s arm and pierced his stomach. I’m afraid he won’t last the night, commander.”
“And how many orcs?”
“No one’s counted them,” Fer said, with a grimace. “No more than thirty.”
“Thirty orcs after an advantage of fifty. We got off lightly after all.”
“Commander, what shall we do with the two prisoners?” One-Eye shouted.
“We’ll deal with them in a moment,” Fer said somberly.
“Come on, Harold, let’s take a look,” said Kli-Kli, jumping to his feet.
I wasn’t really interested in looking at orcs. I’d have preferred to dispatch them straight to the darkness, it’s a lot safer that way.
“Oh, come on!” he said, tugging on my arm. “What’s the point of just sitting around?”
Cursing the restless goblin to the high heavens, I got up off the ground and plodded after him.
The two Firstborn had been wrapped round with so much rope that it looked as if they had fallen into some gigantic spider’s web. One was wounded in the leg and the blood was still flowing, but no one had bothered to bandage the wound. Four soldiers were keeping a close watch on the prisoners, one of them holding the point of a lance right against the neck of a Firstborn. Egrassa was standing beside them, toying with a crooked dagger.
Orcs and elves. Elves and orcs. They look so much alike that at first glance it’s hard for someone inexperienced to tell the two races apart. Both of them have swarthy skin, yellow eyes, ash-gray hair, black lips, and fangs, and they speak the same language. The differences are too small for a casual observer to notice.
Firstborn and elves are blood relatives. Orcs are a little bit shorter than elves, a little bit stickier, their lips are a little bit thicker and their fangs are a little bit longer. And sometimes that simple “little bit” can cost a careless man his life. The only clear difference is that orcs never cut their hair and weave it into long braids.
“If you want to die quickly, answer my questions. We’ll start with you,” Fer said to the wounded orc.
The orc set his jaws, jerked, and gave a gurgling sound. Blood poured out of his mouth.
“Sagra!” one of the soldiers exclaimed in horror. “He’s bitten off his own tongue!”
The orc suddenly arched over sideways, and the point of the lance that was just pricking his skin ran right through his neck. The Border Kingdom soldier swore and recoiled, pulling out the lance, but it was too late—from the fountain of blood shooting up toward the sky it was clear that the Firstborn was dead.
“Kassani, darkness take you! Stop acting like a little kid!” Fer swore at the soldier.
“They’re all crazy, commander! He stuck himself on it,” said the soldier.
“Well then, your friend has departed for the darkness, but I won’t give you the chance to do the same,” Egrassa said to the remaining orc. “You will answer this man’s questions, or our conversation is going to last for a very long time.”
The orc looked contemptuously at the elf and spat in his face.
“I don’t talk to lower races.”
Egrassa calmly wiped the gob of spittle off his face and broke one of the orc’s fingers. The Firstborn howled.
“You will answer, or I will break all the rest of your fingers and toes.” The elf’s voice was as cold as the frozen Needles of Ice.
I turned and walked away. It doesn’t make me feel good watching someone’s fingers get broken. Kli-Kli came with me.
“Harold, I still can’t believe that we survived.”
“Well then, pinch yourself on the ear,” I advised him.
