run if it should come to that. I can lead away those who are following us now, and lead them a long way off—the forest spirits be praised, I have enough strength for that—so beware, not of those who are behind, but those who are ahead. Since they have survived, our pursuers have probably informed their kinsmen about the fugitives, and there are two large orc settlements ahead. The forest is full of orcs, so keep your eyes open. Follow the stream to the lake and turn northwest. Perhaps you will break through. Tresh Egrassa, may fortune smile on you.”
The elf nodded.
“That’s all I have to say. Move quickly and try not to stop, but don’t get careless. Kli-Kli, one moment.”
Glo-Glo took his granddaughter to one side and the others set about checking their weapons.
Kli-Kli came running up, and Glo-Glo addressed all of us: “May the forest spirits preserve you.”
And then he added, just for me: “Take good care of yourself, Dancer, and do what must be done.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that “do,” but I nodded, just to be on the safe side.
“Thank you for getting me out of the Labyrinth, Glo-Glo.”
The old shaman just chuckled, then he nodded in farewell and disappeared into the trees.
“Forward,” said Egrassa, and started running alongside the stream.
16
The Song Of The Flute
I had no more strength to run and I collapsed and fell. What I needed now was to lie there for a while, get my breath back, recover my strength. But my dreams were not fated to come true. I was grabbed by the arms from both sides and jerked back onto my feet.
“Run, Harold!” Eel hissed.
“Just a little farther!” said Lamplighter, adding his plea to his comrade’s. “Run, lad! You can do it!”
Gulping, I nodded. I had an unmerciful stabbing pain in my side, but I had to run, I had to.
“Take him!” Eel barked, and he and Mumr dragged me on.
I set one foot in front of the other as best as I was able. Hallas and Deler followed the example of their two comrades and grabbed the exhausted Kli-Kli. She didn’t have any strength to resist. So the gobliness and I were the only two who had broken down after the two-hour chase. But the warriors were tired, too, and now we were weighing them down. I accepted the support from Eel and Lamplighter for about ten minutes and then ran on my own.
“Can you manage?” the Garrakian asked me uncertainly. “Give me the spear.”
I nodded weakly.
At noon the mist was still hanging all around us, as if Zagraba had decided to hide us forever from the eyes of the world and its own primeval thickets. But I didn’t care anymore. An eternity later, when Egrassa realized he was the only one who could maintain the pace he had set and everyone else urgently needed a rest, the elf ordered a halt. I dropped where I stood.
“How d’you like dashing about like this?” Kli-Kli wheezed.
“I’m not used to such long-distance sprints,” I answered. “How about you?”
“I’m all right, but Deler was carrying me piggyback for the last forty minutes, and he was suffering.”
“Don’t worry, my friend, I’m all right,” said Deler, breathing like a punctured blacksmith’s bellows—as we all were.
“The drums have stopped!” Eel said, interrupting us. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back against an old golden-leaf.
“Have they really gone?” Mumr asked in relief.
Lamplighter had had it harder than anyone else. Running through the forest with a bidenhander and looking after me at the same time was no easy job.
“Either the Firstborn have decided to pursue us in silence, which isn’t like them at all, or the goblin has managed to put them off our trail,” Egrassa mused thoughtfully. “How much time do you need to rest, milord?”
“How much time do we have?”
“A little more than ten minutes, then we’ll have to set out again if we don’t want the orc patrols to find us. We’ll go along the stream—it flows northward. The orcs aren’t gods, they could quite easily lose our trail, and if we hurry, we’ll be out of the Golden Forest in a week.”
“And then it will take us another week to get out of Zagraba. We’ve stirred up the Firstborn, Egrassa; they probably won’t stop following us at the edge of the Golden Forest,” Eel objected.
“Maybe you’re right, and maybe you’re not,” the dark elf told the Garrakian. “If we don’t make any noise and attract attention to ourselves, I’m quite capable of leading us out of Zagraba. Only in the name of all the gods— move quietly. The mist is thick, the orcs are very close, and I’d prefer it if we noticed them before they know we’re here.”
I’d have said the eight orcs were moving very quietly, but to Egrassa’s keen hearing they sounded very noisy, so we had no trouble concealing ourselves and falling on the enemy en masse. We couldn’t afford to let the Firstborn go—they might come across our tracks and realize we’d duped them and then come after us again or, even worse, warn their friends. In that case the element of surprise would be completely lost, and we’d find ourselves back in the role of foxes running from a pack of hounds.
It was all over before it even started. The orcs hadn’t been expecting our ambush, and the element of surprise was decisive—and fatal. Kli-Kli and Eel threw knives at the same instant, and Egrassa used his bow. Before the orcs realized what was happening, four of them were dead. The other four drew their yataghans and one dashed toward Egrassa, as the most dangerous of our group. But the Firstborn’s way was blocked by Mumr, who had been ordered to protect our only bowman at any cost. Lamplighter met the Firstborn, struck him in the groin with a rapid jab, immediately dodged aside so that he was behind his opponent, and sliced off the Firstborn’s leg with a single smooth stroke.
The skirmish was so brief, I didn’t have time to join in. Alistan, holding his sword with both hands, clashed with another orc, but the two enemies had only exchanged one blow apiece when Egrassa put an arrow in the orc’s back. The same fate overtook the orc who went for Deler.
The last of the four was felled by Hallas. The Firstborn tried to hit the gnome with an ax, but Lucky grabbed hold of the handle and struck the orc on the leg with his mattock. When the Firstborn let go of his ax and fell over on his back, the gnome brought his mattock down on his enemy’s head. The whole battle lasted just over twenty seconds.
“Kli-Kli, pull out your knives and my arrows; everyone else grab these orcs by the arms and drag them well away from the stream,” the elf ordered. “I’ll risk using a little bit of magic, perhaps it will put them off our trail.”
We hid the bodies among the roots of two old oaks that were almost intertwined with each other and then piled a heap of moldy leaves over them. Eel and Hallas went back over the site of the battle and tried to eliminate all traces of blood. Meanwhile Egrassa put some kind of spell on the improvised grave.
“It’s a waste of time,” Mumr sighed, wiping off the blade of his sword with a bundle of leaves. “It looks like it’s been trampled by a herd of mammoths. You can’t put the soil back in place or spread the leaves out again. If only Lady Miralissa was here.…”
The gods were kind, and for the rest of that day nobody found us. Once Egrassa thought he could hear a distant rumble of drums, but it was only the wind wandering through the branches of the trees that had lost most of their leaves. The stream that had been our escort for the last two days had grown to the size of a small river and the river flowed into a large lake, which we reached in the twilight. The mist and the advancing darkness made it impossible to see the opposite shore.
We settled in for the night beside the lake, making our resting place among the dense growth of tall reeds. It was a restless and very chilly night. Cold gusts of wind swirled through the rustling sea of reeds, chilling me to the
