“Milord?”
“Give me one minute, I’m thinking,” said the count, knitting his brows together.
“Very well. Harold, Kli-Kli, stay beside Hallas. Eel, take the right. Mumr, take the left. Try to hold out for as long as possible and not let them through until I run out of arrows. Do you see that golden-leaf?”
The elf carried on giving instructions, but I wasn’t listening any longer. May the Nameless One take me! Could this really be the end?
“We just have to hope there aren’t any bowmen,” Kli-Kli said in a quiet voice.
Her fingers were flickering desperately as she wove some complicated sign.
“Are you sure of what you’re doing?” I asked her cautiously.
“I’ve never been so sure of anything, Dancer. Of course, it’s not the Hornets of Vengeance, but I don’t think they’ll like the Hammer of Dust much better.”
“How many of them are there?”
“The same number as attacked us. Only seventeen.”
“We were attacked by seventeen orcs?”
“And five of their grun dogs. Didn’t you notice? If not for Egrassa and his bow, they’d have us given a far worse mauling.”
“Listen to me,” said Alistan Markauz, suddenly breaking his silence. “We don’t need to give battle now. Kli-Kli, catch!”
He threw something small to the gobliness and she caught it deftly. It turned out to be a silver ring with the count’s personal crest.
“Milord, don’t!” she cried out in fright.
“I must, jester, it’s your only chance. If you get back, give it to my son.”
“What’s going on?” asked Mumr, not understanding a thing.
He wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand. Not everyone’s as bright as Kli-Kli and Eel.
“Are you sure?” the Garrakian asked. “Perhaps I should go?”
“I’m sure,” replied the captain of the royal guard. “The shaman knew, that’s why he gave the thing to me. I’ll try to lead them as far away from you as I can. Egrassa, lead the unit on!”
“Don’t worry, milord, I’ll lead them all the way to Avendoom,” the dark elf said with a solemn nod. “Will you take the krasta? You’ll be able to hold out longer with it.”
“No, I’m used to a sword. Harold!”
“Yes, milord?” For some reason my mouth had gone dry.
“Give the Horn to Artsivus so that he can drive that snake back into the snow. If you don’t, be sure I’ll get you, even from the next world!”
I just nodded. The count took Glo-Glo’s gift and squeezed the lump of earth in his fist. Our phantom doubles appeared out of thin air. Milord Alistan swung round and ran off to the west without looking back. Our doubles followed him, leaving perfectly real tracks on the ground.
“Egrassa, we have to hurry. Glo-Glo’s spell won’t last forever; we’ll soon start leaving tracks again.”
“You’re right, Kli-Kli. Harold. Mumr! Pick up the gnome!”
The sound of the horns had faded away a long time ago, but we kept on running and running. I had a terrible empty feeling—we were only alive because Milord Alistan had led the orcs away from us. I realized in my mind that none of us would ever see the count again, at least, not in this life … but hope was still glimmering somewhere in my heart. Maybe he’d manage to outwit the orcs and then catch up with us?
“Until I see his body, I shall believe milord is still alive,” said Kli-Kli in a quiet voice as she ran beside me. She might have been reading my thoughts. “What am I going to say to the king?”
Her question was left unanswered.
“We have to stop,” Mumr panted. “His wound’s started bleeding again.”
I squinted at Hallas. Yes, blood was oozing from under the bandage.
“Egrassa! Eel!” Kli-Kli called to the warriors ahead of us. “Stop.”
“This isn’t the time.”
“If we don’t stop the bleeding, Hallas will die!”
“All right, but do it quickly. The hunting units have lost our trail, but that’s only a brief respite.”
We put Hallas down on the carpet of autumn leaves and Kli-Kli and Eel started attending to the wounded gnome.
“Harold, Mumr, one moment,” the elf called to us. “I’ll stand guard, and you get two long, strong poles. While we have time, we’ll try to make a stretcher.”
“We need more than just two poles, Tresh Egrassa.”
“I know. We’ll tie drokr cloaks between them. The material should take the weight. Don’t waste any time, we have almost none left.”
Mumr took Hallas’s mattock off his belt, put it beside the krasta, and picked up his two-handed sword. It didn’t take long to find what the elf wanted. Lamplighter cut down two young trees with his bidenhander, then chopped off their branches, and we were left holding two poles that we carried back to the spot where Kli-Kli was still looking after the gnome. With the elfin cloaks and the two poles we made a pretty good stretcher and then put Hallas on it.
“How is he?” I asked Kli-Kli.
“In a bad way. If only Miralissa was here.…”
“Miralissa’s gone,” Egrassa snapped ruthlessly. “Put your hope in the gods, not the dead. The gnome’s life is in the hands of the gods. Eel, let’s go.”
And now the gnome was carried by the elf and the Garrakian. Kli-Kli led the way and Lamplighter and I followed the stretcher. An hour later I took Eel’s place and Mumr replaced Egrassa. It was a lot more convenient carrying Hallas this way than in our arms. We moved faster, especially when Kli-Kli led us out onto a wide animal track that ran due north.
During the afternoon a dank autumn drizzle started to fall, and I had to cover Hallas with my cloak—I still had the jacket, and that was fine. Now our substantially reduced group was led on by Egrassa. Kli-Kli, freed from her honorable duties as guide, kept getting under our feet and checking on Lucky’s condition. Sometimes the gnome groaned, and the gobliness took hold of his hand and started whispering quietly to herself.
When the wounded gnome quieted down, Kli-Kli walked along beside him, occasionally glancing back. She was clearly hoping Milord Alistan would come back, just as I was. Kli-Kli noticed my fleeting glance.
“The mist’s thinning out.”
“Yes, a bit,” I agreed. “Probably because of the rain.”
The gobliness snorted quietly at that, but she didn’t say anything.
“How long will it take us to walk through the Golden Forest?”
“If Hallas lives, a week and a half, or maybe even longer. If…” She paused. “If he doesn’t live, a week.”
Such were the facts of life—the wounded gnome was slowing us down. Of course, abandoning Hallas was out of the question, but … Egrassa could decide to do it if we were really up against it. If he had to choose between his duty as a comrade and his duty to all the rest of the world, I was sure the elf would choose what he saw as the lesser evil, and Eel might not like that at all. I tried not to think what would happen then.
We walked on through the cold rainy forest for two hours. I thanked the gods that this was the south of Valiostr. In the north of the kingdom the first ground frosts should have started some time ago, and in the morning the puddles were probably covered with a thin crust of ice. I hoped we could get out of Zagraba before the start of November, when it would be really cold and uncomfortable.
Hallas wasn’t groaning any longer. His face was almost the same color as the snow in the barren wastes of the Lonely Giant. Neither Kli-Kli nor Egrassa could do anything to help the gnome. We had all known for a long time that Hallas wouldn’t survive the night, but we stubbornly carried the stretcher, as if we were trying to overtake death itself.
“Orcs! Very close,” Kli-Kli gasped, snatching out her knives.
Ah, darkness! The rumble of the orcs’ drums seemed to be coming from behind those golden-leafs over there. Close. Very close. Egrassa did his familiar trick of listening to the ground. When the elf got to his feet, the
