then you’ll understand.”
“Maybe we should go round the battlefield?”
“What’s the matter, Harold?” Lamplighter asked with a frown. “Since when have you been afraid of corpses?”
Ever since I took a stroll through Hrad Spein! I thought to myself, but I wisely said nothing. I just didn’t understand why we had to barge straight in and walk over the dead bodies when there was a perfectly open patch of ground if we just kept a bit farther to the left.
Egrassa seemed to think the same as I did, because he turned off the road, and when we approached the battlefield we left most of the dead on our right, but what we did see was more than enough.
The elf was right. As far as I could tell, the orcs really were young. Very young. Mere boys, in fact. And they had met their death attempting to repeat the great feat of their ancestors.
“Boys…,” Kli-Kli whispered. “It’s strange, Harold. They’re our enemies, our bitter enemies. They hate everyone who’s different from them, but now I feel sorry for them.”
“You’re right, jester. Children shouldn’t be fighting where real warriors should take up the sword. What made them do it? Why make this stupid attack? They knew they had no chance of victory,” said Eel, trying not to look at the faces of the dead.
“Maybe they were surrounded and forced to give battle?” I suggested.
“The signs tell a different story. No one surrounded them, and anyway, Zagraba’s not far away. They could have broken out of encirclement.”
“I wonder when this battle took place?”
“Slaughter, Harold, not battle,” Egrassa corrected me. “This is a field of slaughter, not a battlefield. The foolish young pups weren’t given a chance. Can you sense it, Kli-Kli?”
“Yes.”
“What in the name of darkness are you talking about?”
“Magic, Hallas. Magic was used here.”
“I’m not blind, goblin. The gods be praised, I still have one eye left! Just look at how battered the castle is!”
“Men did that.”
“What?” Lamplighter and I asked in a single voice.
“There was no shamanism here. Only wizardry. And that means it was the work of men or light elves. And, as you realize, the latter is not very likely.”
“Then why did they damage their own castle, smart aleck?”
“That was the backlash, Hallas, the price paid for using wizardry. They used one of the Order’s most powerful spells here. I assume that some abomination descended on the orcs and immobilized them all for a while. But the spell must have been so powerful that they couldn’t control the backlash, and it hit the castle. Only the orcs took most of the blow. Do you see the depressions in the ground and what happened to the bodies?”
“I thought they’d been trampled by cavalry,” Eel hissed.
“There aren’t any hoofprints.”
“I see that now, Kli-Kli. But there are plenty of prints from metal-shod boots.”
“Aha, those who weren’t caught by the backlash were finished off by the defenders. The Firstborn were unable to resist in any case, and they were dispatched into the darkness. The men didn’t fight a very fair battle here.”
“If you ask me, that’s no more than the orcs deserve,” said Mumr, spitting down at his feet. “They should stay in their Zagraba and leave our kingdom alone. And as for war … Well, this is war, Kli-Kli, and in war any means are fair. You can demonstrate your nobility in a duel and allow your opponent to pick up the sword that he’s dropped. Here, if you lose your sword, then you lose your head as well. It doesn’t matter why you went to war, what age you are, and how noble you are—you either win and snatch victory, or you rot on the battlefield. In war there is no third way.”
“But even so, it’s not fair,” Kli-Kli argued stubbornly. “They didn’t even have a shaman with them. Weapons should be fought with weapons, not with magic.”
“And Sagra be praised that they didn’t have a shaman,” Lamplighter said furiously. “If they did, three times as many of our men would have been killed. This is war, Kli-Kli. Maybe you’ll understand some time.…”
“I do understand,” the gobliness said reluctantly.
While we were talking, we came back out onto the road leading to Moitsig and moved away from the half- ruined castle—we could see that there wasn’t a single soul in it—and the field of death. The city came closer and closer.
“How long ago was the battle?” I asked, breaking the heavy silence.
“Judging from the fact that they haven’t burned the orcs’ bodies yet, and the crows can still fly—yesterday evening at the earliest,” Eel answered.
“Why, the gates of Moitsig are standing wide open!” Kli-Kli exclaimed in amazement. “Either the townspeople have stopped being afraid after the battle, or something’s happened.”
“Nothing’s happened!” said Eel, screwing up his eyes. “Just look how many people there are up on the walls!”
Well, if those black dots running along the wall were people … We were still too far from the city for me to see.
“I think we’ve been spotted!” said Egrassa, watching a detachment of horsemen come flying out of the gates.
“Hardly surprising,” Lamplighter said with a shrug. “We’re in open territory here, anyone can see us. Keep back, Egrassa. You never know…”
Lamplighter didn’t bother to finish what he was saying, the meaning was clear enough. The lads hurrying toward us might turn out to be just a bit too hot-blooded and keen to hand out punishment. At a passionate gallop it was easy to confuse an elf with an orc.
Egrassa’s eyes flashed at Mumr’s words but—Sagot be praised—he didn’t reach for his s’kash. I don’t think Lamplighter realized he had mortally insulted the elf.
“I am not used to hiding behind the backs of others!”
“Don’t be angry, Egrassa!” Eel put in hastily. “The Master of the Long Sword is talking good sense. It’s best for a bowman to stand in the second line.”
“Do you intend to fight?” the elf asked, raising his right eyebrow mockingly.
“No.”
“Then it makes no difference,” said Egrassa, putting an end to the difficult conversation.
I was starting to feel a bit nervous. “Hallas!” I called. “Don’t go for your mattock!”
The riders were coming closer. Four of the warriors directed their horses to the left and started going round our little group. All four of them were armed with bows. The main group came rushing straight at us, making no effort to restrain their horses. I liked the look of this less and less. Unfortunately, Egrassa had the krasta, and you can’t really fight a man on horseback with a dagger, especially when he’s armed with a lance. One of the riders pressed his spurs into the flank of his horse and moved up two lengths ahead of his comrades. What was this lad intending to do? And why had he lowered his lance?
The ground started to tremble under our feet.
“Stop, Harold!” Kli-Kli hissed, clinging on hard to my clothes. “If we run, he’ll hit us with his lance! Stay here.… Stay here.…”
The horse—a huge black beast that could have emerged straight from the darkness—came flying at us. At the very last moment, just when it seemed that its massive carcass would crush us, the horseman reined in his mount. It reared up on its hind legs, flailing at the air with its front hooves and almost splitting Eel’s head open. The Garrakian ducked to one side, keeping his eyes on the rider, but the horseman had eyes for only one target— Egrassa. As soon as the horse’s front feet touched the ground, the unknown warrior thrust with his lance with all his might, aiming for Egrassa’s chest. The elf would have been spitted if not for Lamplighter. In some miraculous manner the puny Wild Heart managed to get between the rider and the dark elf. The bidenhander sliced through the air with a hiss and collided with the lance, knocking it up and away to one side, and then swung into the next stroke, which should have ended with a blow to the enemy’s unprotected side, but at that point the other horsemen
