The h’san’kor growled something, and its weapon reduced the nearest young fir tree to a million tiny chips of wood. When the flute drew level with the little fire that Hallas had lit, the gnome tossed something into the flames and ran with all the speed his little legs could muster.
A brilliant flash lit up the forest and for a moment I was completely blinded. Then there was a deafening bang, flames went soaring right up to the sky, and I definitely felt the earth shake.
When the bright spots cleared from in front of my eyes I saw before me the scene of destruction caused by Hallas’s unknown weapon. The fir trees were still burning and there was more than enough light to make out what was happening all around us. The gnome was standing on all fours, shaking his head furiously. The victor’s face was covered in blood and his eyebrows were singed. A hole had appeared in the ground at the spot where the fire had been burning a few moments earlier. The h’san’kor was lying beside it. The blast had torn off both its legs, but the monster was still trying to reach for its club.
“That beast’s hard to kill!” exclaimed Mumr, adjusting his grip on the hilt of his sword.
“Cut its head off!” Egrassa shouted from somewhere behind him.
“Harold, you help Hallas!” Deler told me, picking up his battle-ax.
Eel, Deler, Alistan Markauz, and Lamplighter all dashed to the h’san’kor.
“Are you all right?” I asked, helping the gnome get up.
“I can’t hear a damn thing, Harold!” the gnome roared, and shook his head. “Not a damn thing!”
Meanwhile Milord Alistan bounded up to the monster and plunged his sword into its chest with all his strength. The monster roared and swung its hand blindly. The blow caught the count on his chest plate and knocked him off his feet.
Mumr swung his sword and halted the hand that was raised to strike at Milord again. The bidenhander sliced through the h’san’kor’s wrist, leaving the hand dangling by a scrap of skin. Eel thrust his “brother” and “sister” into the beast’s other hand, pinning it to the ground, and Deler took a wide swing and buried the crescent-shaped blade of his battle-ax in the h’san’kor’s forehead.
The beast howled and shrieked, waving the stump of its arm, with blood pouring out of it. Mumr darted over to the hand that Eel had pinned to the ground, and hacked the arm off at the shoulder with three stout blows.
“Die! Die! Die, will you, you bastard!” said the dwarf, raining down blows on the h’san’kor’s head.
The heavy weapon pulped flesh and crushed bone. The flute twitched … but it was still alive. Breathy gasps and incomprehensible fragments of phrases came out of the monster’s mouth. I suspected it was about to treat us to another spell. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“Cut its damn head off at last, will you!” Kli-Kli shrieked.
“Harold, where’s my mattock?” asked Hallas, pressing his left hand to his split eyebrow and trying to push me away with his right.
“Calm down, they’ll manage!”
“Oh, sure they will. Get its head off, you idiots!”
“Deler, you go right!” Mumr barked, swinging the bidenhander back above his head. “Eel, milord! Cut off its stump, so that it can’t jerk about! Here we go!
The bidenhander smashed down on the monster’s neck. Then the battle-ax. Then the two-handed sword again. The dwarf and the man started hacking away like lumberjacks. When Deler brought down his battle-ax for the third time, the h’san’kor fell silent. This time, forever.
Deler swore in the gnomic language and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. “That was hot work! Hallas, how are you?”
“What? Alive! And how’s your back?”
“My jacket’s ruined,” the dwarf said, making a wry face, and set his battle-ax on his shoulder.
The fir trees were still burning, but the magical green flames had already given way to ordinary ones.
“Tell me, my friend Hallas, what was that you threw into the fire?” Kli-Kli asked the gnome thoughtfully as he studied the hole blasted into the ground.
“Speak louder!”
“What did you fling in the fire?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” the gnome snapped. “The powder horn, that’s what! Thanks to that brute all I’ve got left is one loaded pistol! But never mind.… Damn the pistol, the important thing is that everyone’s still alive. When I tell the lads back in the Giant I felled a h’san’kor, they’ll never believe me!”
“You felled it? If Lamplighter and me hadn’t lopped its head off, you’d have more to worry about than a singed beard!” Deler didn’t intend to miss out on the credit for a heroic feat like this.
“Have you not forgotten about the first monster, milord?” I asked Alistan Markauz. “Somewhere up ahead there’s another one just like this, only that one’s alive!”
“I don’t think we need worry about that flute, Harold,” Egrassa said in a quiet voice. “If the h’san’kor were alive, all the noise we made would have brought it here.”
“Could that man really have killed it?” Hallas simply couldn’t believe the idea.
“Apparently so.”
“Then he’s even more dangerous than a flute,” Eel declared. “How is Lady Miralissa?”
The Garrakian’s question hung in the air and everyone looked at the dark elf, who had stayed with the elfess all this time.
“She’s all right now,” Egrassa replied, hanging his s’kash behind his shoulder.
3
At The Gates
It took us an hour to build the funeral pyre. There were plenty of trees all around; Deler’s battle-ax worked away without a pause, and all the others kept up well with the dwarf. The pile of timber on which we set Miralissa rivaled the size of the pyre we had built when Ell died. The elfess’s s’kash and bow lay beside her and Egrassa kept only the quiver.
When the elf first led us to Miralissa, no one could believe that she was dead. She seemed to be sleeping or resting with her eyes closed. There were no wounds, and her bluish chain mail was undamaged. Only when we picked the young elfess up to carry her to the fire, a single drop of blood flowed out of her right ear.
Miralissa had been killed by her own shamanism. At the moment when the magical wall burst and shattered under the furious pressure of the h’san’kor’s attack, the thread of the elfess’s life had also snapped. The princess of the House of the Black Moon had put all her strength into the magic and she had no chance of surviving the powerful backlash from her own spell.
When the magical flame of the pyre was transformed into a wild roaring dragon that threatened to consume the moon and the stars, and Miralissa had disappeared forever behind the red tongues of flame, Egrassa sang the funeral song.
The flames roared furiously as they accepted Miralissa’s soul and escorted it to the light, but the elf’s voice could be heard even above their roar. The bright glow of the fire flickered on the faces of the warriors silently observing the raging flames.
Hallas and Deler looked like brothers now—both silent, with gloomy faces. Alistan Markauz gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. Eel was as impassive as ever; there was not a trace of emotion in his face, only weariness dancing in his eyes the color of steel. Lamplighter leaned on his bidenhander with his eyes narrowed, peering into the fire. Kli-Kli was crying his eyes out and wiping the streaming tears off his face. And I …
How was I?
I suppose … desolated … and very tired. I felt that now there was absolutely nothing that I wanted.
“Kli-Kli, stop crying,” Egrassa said when he finished the song.
“I’m not crying,” the goblin whined miserably.
“Do you think I’m blind?”
“If I say I’m not crying, then I’m not crying!”
“She knew what she was doing. Take comfort in the fact that if my cousin had not maintained the wall for so long, we would all be dead.”
