touch of the ground, another long leap. I’d gladly have bet that if the lad really wanted, he could have matched the speed of a horse. A gray cloak fluttered out behind his shoulders like a night bird’s wings, his face was hidden by a hood. In his hands the man was holding a spear with a black shaft and a very broad leaf-shaped blade.
In the space of four seconds the man appeared, ran past us, and disappeared behind the trees.
And then they came.
A flute sang again, and a creature leapt out from round the corner. It ran past so quickly that I couldn’t even see it clearly—it was a blur of red, black, and green with absurdly long arms and legs. The h’san’kor was gone in an instant. The beast was too intent on pursuing its quarry to take any notice of us, and anyway, thanks to Miralissa and Kli-Kli, we had become invisible to its eyes for a while.
Another flute sounded to say that it was getting close, and the h’san’kor that had run past us replied.
The second beast burst out onto the track, unexpectedly stumbled, and stopped exactly opposite our hiding place. Its eyes, blazing with purple fire, looked in our direction. I pressed myself down into the ground. Now I could get a very good view of the creature.
The tall figure, three times the height of a man, seemed absurdly thin. It had immensely long arms and legs and the neck supporting the head was as skinny as the body. The h’san’kor’s head looked like some bizarre frog’s skull with skin tightly stretched over it.
I couldn’t see any fur or scales on the beast, its skin was entirely covered in red, black, and green stripes. The nose was a black hollow; the huge eyes filled with purple flame covered half the face; there were short, curled horns on the head; and the mouth … For some reason I’d thought it would be filled with teeth, but when the beast parted its lips and grinned, I saw it had no more than five crooked, yellow stumps in its jaws. No armor or clothing, but one clawed hand was clutching something like a spiked club, and in its left hand it was holding the sack I had abandoned only five minutes earlier.
I felt icy worms stir in my stomach. It had to see us now! But it mustn’t see us!
The beast raised the sack to its nose, sniffed at it, snorted, and tossed it away.
Somewhere in the distance a flute played a triumphant melody—evidently the first beast had finally overtaken the man. Distracted, the h’san’kor lowered its head to one side and started listening to its comrade’s call. The triumphant trill suddenly changed to a bellow of pain, and once again the nighttime forest was filled with deafening silence.
Lamplighter was lying next to me and I could hear his heart pounding. But the question hammering through my mind was: Why had the beast bellowed so loudly? Obviously I was not the only one worried about this. The h’san’kor took several uncertain steps along the path in the direction that the bellow had come from.…
Suddenly the world flashed pink again, the prickly shivers running across my body disappeared, Miralissa and Kli-Kli’s spells vanished, and … the monster saw us. With a menacing growl the beast moved toward us, parting the bushes.
“Scatter!” shouted Miralissa, already on her feet. “Attack from all sides, all together!”
I was scared absolutely witless. The elfess was chanting a spell, the soldiers fell back, drawing the h’san’kor on, and I watched as the beast advanced on us, like death come to life. The lilac flame in the flute’s eyes was burning with a hungry glow.
Egrassa’s arrow whistled through the air and I recovered my senses.
“Shoot, Harold!” he shouted to me.
I shot on target, the bolts slammed precisely into the forest monster’s chest, and I started reloading the crossbow, but this time with ice bolts, because the ordinary ones had no effect, just like the elf’s arrows—there were already at least six stuck in the monster, but it didn’t seem to be bothered in the least.
A green wall flared up in front of the h’san’kor (just like the one that Miralissa had created at the lair of the Nameless One’s servants). The monster stopped and roared so loudly that my ears popped, and slammed its club down on the magical barrier. It was obviously some special kind of club, because the wall shuddered visibly.
“I can’t hold it for long!” the elfess shouted. “Egrassa, Harold, go for the eyes! Put out its eyes!”
By this time, the elf had stuck the h’san’kor with arrows all the way up to the top of its head. The monster took a step back and then attacked the wall again. The elfess groaned with the strain of trying to maintain the barrier. I unloaded the crossbow into the beast and the ice bolts exploded without causing our enemy the slightest harm.
“Battle magic doesn’t work on it!” cried Kli-Kli, flinging his first pair of throwing knives. “Ordinary bolts! Go for the eyes!”
“I’m out of arrows!” shouted Egrassa.
Another roar, a blow, a flash of green from the wall, and a muffled groan from Miralissa.
“Take mine!” the elfess shouted, and started desperately whispering a new spell.
Egrassa dashed across to her. Kli-Kli parted with another knife.… The h’san’kor seemed to understand human speech perfectly well. It saw me aiming at its most vulnerable spot, stopped storming the wall between us, and, at the very moment when I pressed both triggers, it put one hand over its eyes.
So this vile monster could use magic, too?
“It’s useless!” cried the elf, baring his s’kash.
Kli-Kli howled and spun like a top, working a spell. Miralissa finished her own magic, and by the light of the moon and a small fire lit by the gnome, all the grass around rose up into the air, gathered together in the form of a huge knife blade, and struck at the flute’s chest.
It didn’t work. The knife fell and scattered into harmless tiny scraps of green. Alistan Markauz swore; the monster chuckled triumphantly and smashed its club down on the wall that was barely holding up.
Hallas was wreathed in vile-smelling gunpowder smoke. Our enemy’s left eye burst and went blank, and the h’san’kor roared in pain and fury. The second ball hit a little lower, passing through the h’san’kor’s neck. Its body was already black from the blood oozing from dozens of wounds, and now the life started pulsing out of its neck in sharp spurts. Good old Hallas—he had realized that the flute’s spell might work on arrows and crossbow bolts, but balls—or bullets, as he called them—could pierce the magical barrier. And they had.
The gnome was a skilled master of his weapon, and this time the monster’s right eye went blank. But I was astounded to see the h’san’kor still standing firmly on its feet. Blinded, and howling like a hundred sinners roasting on a skillet, it flung itself at the wall.
The wall flared up brightly for the final time, and shattered into a thousand bright green shards. I thought my head would explode from the terrible ringing sound. Three fir trees standing close to the demolished wall burst into green flame, burning from the ground right up to the top of their crowns and illuminating the forest with a green light.
Deler was howling and rolling around on the ground—his jacket had caught fire. Eel dashed over to the dwarf and started beating out the flames on his back. The fire roared as it devoured the trees. The h’san’kor shrieked piercingly and flailed blindly in front of itself with its club, hoping to catch one of us.
“Everybody back! Over here, quick!” Hallas yelled.
Eel helped Deler to his feet and they ran into the forest. Alistan and Egrassa picked up Miralissa, who was lying on the ground, and carried her away from the monster. I went running after them—this was no time to hang about, the gnome might have another surprise up his sleeve.
“Get down!” Hallas shouted, and we all dropped to the ground.
“This way, you ugly brute! Come to me!” Beside the howling h’san’kor the gnome looked like some little bug.
The beast smashed its club blindly against the ground and walked toward the voice.
“Well? Here I am! Catch me, you horned bastard!”
