“Would you like a carrot?” the goblin asked amicably, producing one from behind his back.
The carrot was almost half as big as Kli-Kli himself. A queen of carrots. A massive great carrot.
“No, thank you.”
“You don’t want any? All right then. I can only ask, and there’ll be more left for me, anyway!”
The jester didn’t try to insist, he just bit a good-sized piece off the orange vegetable and started crunching on it, squinting contentedly at the sun.
“Vegetables are good for you, Harold,” the jester declared with his mouth full. “You can’t live on just meat.”
“Are you and I about to have a gastronomical debate?” I asked, arching one eyebrow.
We just sat there like that, me saying nothing and watching the gnomes at work, Kli-Kli dining and sometimes twitching his little feet, evidently trying to perform some dance that only he knew. I must say that it looked very amusing.
“I have two pieces of news, good and bad. Which one shall I start with?” Kli-Kli asked when there was exactly half of the oversized carrot left.
“The good news, I suppose,” I muttered lazily.
It was hot, but the weather was marvelous, and I was enjoying basking in the sun.
“The good news is this,” said the goblin, shaking the tip of his cap so that the bells jingled joyfully. “You’re going tomorrow morning.”
“Now let’s have the bad news.”
“The bad news is this.” The jester sighed sadly and the bells tinkled mournfully. “Unfortunately, I’m staying in the palace and not going with you.”
“Hmm . . . Your sense of values is all topsy-turvy, jester,” I hemmed. “It’s the other way round for me. The good news is bad and the bad news is good.”
“Hah,” Kli-Kli sniffed resentfully. “You’ll be sorry yet that I didn’t go with you!”
“Why’s that?”
“Who’s going to protect you on the way?” he asked with a perfectly serious expression on his face.
“I think I’ll get by all right,” I replied in the same tone of voice. “What are the Wild Hearts and the Rat for?”
“By the way, about the Wild Hearts,” Kli-Kli said, and sank his sharp teeth into the unfortunate carrot again. “Have you had a chance to get to know them yet?”
“No. Why, have you?”
“I should say so! They’ve been here for about a week,” the jester answered indignantly.
But of course. How dare I cast doubt on his ability to make new acquaintances.
“I’ll introduce them to you, only from here, at a distance, if you have no objection.”
“Have you managed to offend them already?” The only possible reason for Kli-Kli’s reluctance to approach the soldiers was that the little parasite had played some kind of nasty trick on the Wild Hearts.
“Why do you assume I’ve offended them?” the jester asked sulkily, looking at me with his bright blue eyes full of reproach. “All I did was pour a bucket of water into each of their beds, and they got upset about it.”
“I expect they did!” I chuckled.
“Well then. You see those ones playing dice? The big one with the yellow hair is Honeycomb. The one beside him with the beard is Uncle. The skinny, bald one. He’s the leader of this glum group. And that one over there, the plump one, is called Tomcat.
“I see,” I said, examining the threesome playing dice.
Honeycomb was a broad-shouldered hulk two yards tall with powerful, sinewy hands, a head that appeared to have no neck but grew straight out of his shoulders, and hair the color of lime-blossom honey. His rather simple features identified him as a country boy. You can tell them from the city types straightaway.
“Huppah!” laughed Uncle as he tossed the dice once again and leaned down over them with his comrades.
Uncle was more than fifty years old, with a few sparse gray hairs that had somehow survived on his bald head, and a thick gray beard. Compared with Honeycomb he didn’t look very tall, but he and the giant Honeycomb and the other Wild Hearts all had one thing in common: the experience of men who serve on the walls of the Lonely Giant on the edge of the Desolate Lands.
“I swear on a h’san’kor,” Tomcat growled, “but your luck’s in today, Uncle! I pass.”
The fat, round-faced Wild Heart’s behavior and harsh voice were nothing at all like a cat’s. The only thing that did lend him any resemblance to the animal was his mustache, which looked a bit like a cat’s whiskers.
“Don’t play if you don’t want to,” his leader laughed.
Tomcat waved his hand at his partners and lay down on the grass in front of the fountain, beside the sleeping soldier.
“I suppose that one must be called Sleepy or Snorer?” I asked ironically.
“The one beside Tomcat?” the jester asked. “No, they call him Loudmouth.”
