flinnies are too proud to put up with that kind of treatment.”
“Pack up your things!” said Egrassa, getting up off the ground. “We have the whole day until it gets dark, and then the night in reserve. We have to cover as much distance as possible today.”
“What are we going to do about the orcs?”
This was no idle question from Mumr—there were Firstborn up ahead, even if they weren’t expecting us.
“We’ll kill them,” said Egrassa, glancing at Miralissa, who nodded. “We could just avoid them, of course, but it’s never a good idea to leave enemies behind you.”
“And what do we do about this fellow who’s coming up behind us? Why don’t Deler and I stay behind and ask him a few questions?”
“Hallas, you have no brains and no imagination!” said Deler—the dwarf never pulled any punches talking to his partner. “All you ever want to do is to wave that mattock about. The flinny told us this fellow is dangerous and we should stay well clear of him! And even if we beat him, then how are we going to find the group afterward, have you thought about that? Or since this morning have gnomes learned how to wander through forests without getting lost?”
“It’s no more difficult than walking through the mine galleries,” Hallas muttered.
“But I don’t want to get lost in the forest and then one fine day discover that I’ve wandered into an orcs’ nest,” Deler snapped.
“No one’s staying here,” said Milord Alistan, putting a swift end to the argument between the gnome and the dwarf. “If that man wants to follow us, let him. If he catches up and attacks us, then we’ll fight him. I’m more concerned about Pargaid and his dogs waiting for us up ahead, and this Spinney.”
“We’ll deal with Pargaid when we reach him, milord,” said Eel, who had already packed his sack.
“There’s no reason to be so concerned about the Spinney, either,” said Miralissa, throwing her s’kash behind her shoulder. “The forest spirits could have left it for a hundred different reasons. We’ll hope for the best.”
“And expect the worst,” I muttered quietly, but I think the elfess heard me anyway.
“Kli-Kli.” The dwarf’s voice was very soft, but it sounded rather ominous for the goblin. “What did you do with my hat?”
The goblin decided the best thing to do was hide behind my back. That’s always the way—he plays his pranks and Harold’s left holding the baby.
2
The Red Spinney
“What used to be here before, Kli-Kli?”
“Can’t you see for yourself, from the ruins? A city, of course!”
The goblin and I were lying on a heap of gray stones with a thick covering of moss. Standing beside us was a tall fluted column of the same stone, also overgrown with dark, dense moss, like the entire city of Chu.
The ruins of the ancient city stood in between the trunks of golden-leafs and larches. A column here, a wall there, a little farther off an arch beside some wolfberry bushes, and beyond that, a huge building with a dome that had collapsed. And so on in the same way for as far as the eye could see. The ruins rose straight out of the soft carpet of moss, they were drowning in it, choking in the undergrowth of ferns and thistles, crushed beneath the roots of the mighty golden-leafs. This city had probably been great and beautiful once, and now there was nothing left of its past glory but phantoms. Now it was nothing more than dead stone, eaten away by the hungry moths of time.
“I can see it wasn’t a country village. Who used to live here?”
“How should I know?” the jester asked with a shrug. “These ruins can remember the retreat of the ogres into the Desolate Lands and the arrival of orcs and elves in Siala. There’s no way I could know who lived here in those days. But believe me, Chu is very beautiful. Or it was very beautiful.”
“Have you been here before, too?”
“Of course not. It’s just that Chu isn’t the only abandoned city in Zagraba. There’s another one, a lot like this, near the area where my tribe lives. We used to call it Bu. It’s a lot better preserved than Chu.”
The evening was drawing in as the sun sank behind the horizon, and only a few of its bright rays could penetrate the branches of the trees. Twilight was advancing in the forest. I moved my miniature crossbow closer and checked for the hundredth time that it was loaded.
To my great joy and Kli-Kli’s intense annoyance, Alistan Markauz had left us here while the others went to deal with the orcs.
Well, it was the right thing to do! A thief and a jester aren’t made for waging war and doing battle. The goblin, of course, thought differently, but after grumbling for a while he had finally decided to stay with me.
The bird’s call soared above the ruins like a mournful ghost, echoing off walls and shattering the peace of this deserted spot. For a brief instant the top of the tall skewed column and the trunks of the trees glinted with the blue flash of a spell worked about two hundred yards away. Then the usual calm of the dead city returned.
“It’s started,” said Kli-Kli, sitting up. “That’s Miralissa at work.”
“I can’t hear anything.”
“So much the better. It means no one else can hear anything, either. Let’s wait.”
So we waited. The minutes seemed to drag on for an eternity.
The thick carpet of moss deadened our footsteps, and we first saw the runner when he was just ten yards away. Kli-Kli pinched me very painfully on the arm and nodded toward the column. At first I thought the runner was Egrassa. But then why was the elf holding a yataghan instead of his usual s’kash?
Of course, it wasn’t an elf, but an orc. The two races were too much alike for me to be able to tell the difference in the first few seconds. Sagot be praised, at least we were lying behind the stones and the orc couldn’t see us.
“What are you waiting for? He’ll get away!” Kli-Kli hissed, taking the first pair of throwing knives off his belt.
The fool was right. If the orc managed to get away alive, he would warn his tribe, and we would pay with our heads. The enemy was so close to me I would have had to try really hard to miss.
The bolt easily pierced the light chain mail and stuck in the orc’s back. He stumbled and fell facedown in the moss. I didn’t feel any pangs of conscience about shooting a running enemy from behind. If he’d had a chance, he wouldn’t have thought twice about trying to finish off me and Kli-Kli.
“Did you kill him?” Kli-Kli asked, pressing himself against me in fright.
“Looks like I did,” I said uncertainly, keeping the crossbow out for the time being.
“That’s just the point—it looks like you did. Maybe he’s got enough wits to play dead!” said the goblin, also in no great hurry to go near the body.
“Kli-Kli, he’s got a bolt stuck in his back almost right up to the flight. How could he possibly be alive?”
“I still wouldn’t go anywhere near him,” the jester warned me.
Fear and doubt are always infectious. I started watching the motionless orc apprehensively. What if the goblin was right and the Firstborn was only pretending to be a corpse? In any case, he was still clutching the yataghan in his hand.
“All right,” I sighed. “Just remember, I’m only doing this for your peace of mind.”
I had to walk a few steps closer to the body to put another bolt in the orc’s back. But the lad didn’t even twitch in response to this act of sadism.
“Well, now are you convinced he’s as dead as stone?”
“Almost.” The jester walked cautiously up to the body and prodded the dead orc with the toe of his boot. “The gods be praised, you finished him.”
“They’re not so very frightening, and they die just like men.”
“If you take them by surprise.”
I swung round sharply at the sound of Egrassa’s voice and raised the crossbow.
