Shadow Blizzard

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.

Cra-a-a! Cra-a-a! Cur-a-a-a!

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.

Twang!

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.

“Harold, if it had been an orc in my place, you’d be dead already. And anyway, your crossbow’s not loaded. What happened here?”

“An orc, one of the Firstborn you were supposed to kill. Harold shot him, but I spotted him first,” Kli-Kli babbled, determined not to let me take the credit for his victory.

“No, Kli-Kli, he’s not one of ours.” The elf tugged the body onto its back and leaned down over the orc, studying his face dispassionately. “Miralissa bound them with the Net of Immobility and we finished them all off, they never even saw it coming. Four sitting round a campfire, another one nearby with the wounded soldier, six altogether. We killed them all.”

“Then where did this one come from? Or is this orc just the product of my morbid imagination?” the goblin muttered peevishly.

“It’s just that your lousy flinny didn’t bother to tell us about the seventh one,” said Hallas, appearing from behind a wall. “From the very beginning I said we shouldn’t trust that little flying bastard.”

“Where there was a seventh, there could be an eighth,” Egrassa said thoughtfully.

“Or even a ninth and a tenth,” said the goblin, deliberately rubbing salt into the wound.

“Let’s go and join the others, then decide what to do.”

We set off after the elf, with Hallas panting along behind us. Egrassa confidently led us through the labyrinth of overgrown buildings. There was ruin and decay on all sides, but at the same time the place was … well, beautiful. With the strange, mysterious beauty of thousands of years of time.

Columns soaring up to the height of the golden-leafs or lying on the ground, broken and overgrown with moss. A statue on a pediment, so ancient that it was impossible to tell who you were looking at—a man, an orc, or someone else who lived in Siala before the start of the Gray Age.

The four orcs lying beside the fire that was barely glowing had more arrows than necessary sticking out of them. Miralissa and Egrassa had really made sure of things. There were two more bodies lying a little distance away, under an old larch tree.

Egrassa told Milord Alistan briefly about the orc I had killed.

“The flinny might not have seen the Firstborn if he was in some secret hiding place,” said Miralissa, fingering the sleeve of her dark green jacket thoughtfully.

“He just didn’t want to see, milady,” said Hallas, still unable to forget the dance he had performed for the little news peddler.

“Hallas, Deler, Mumr, Eel! Divide up into pairs and find where that seventh orc was hiding,” said Alistan Markauz.

Eel nodded for them all, and the Wild Hearts disappeared into the ruins.

“It will be completely dark in an hour,” said Milord Alistan, narrowing his eyes and looking up at the sky. “Shall we stay here or carry on?”

“That depends on what our soldiers find,” Miralissa replied wearily, “but I’m in favor of moving on. There’s a full moon now, and plenty of light; we can easily walk until the morning and rest—and then we’ll be at Hrad Spein.”

“I don’t think we should stay here, either, cousin. We can rest once we get past the Red Spinney.”

“Harold, let’s take a look at the bodies,” Kli-Kli called to me.

“I’m not interested in corpses.”

“Well, you should be.”

While the goblin wandered around, looking at the bodies, I loaded up the crossbow with two new bolts.

“Skillfully done, Lady Miralissa. In the finest traditions of the Green Platoon! I definitely approve,” Kli-Kli told the elfess when he came back.

“Well, if even you approve of my work…” She laughed.

“No, I’m serious. We cast the Net of Immobility, then we have five seconds to stick arrows into them. I think that even when the net broke the last two had no idea what was going on and they were easily killed. Who finished off the wounded one?”

“Deler,” replied Alistan Markauz. “So how do you know about the methods of the elves’ commando groups?”

“I’m a polyglot in general,” Kli-Kli answered irrelevantly.

“Well, you can command your pooglits later,” said Deler, who had only heard the fool’s final words. “We have to get going, Milord Alistan. We missed one.”

“He got away. There were two of them. Over that way there’s something like a well shaft. That’s where they were hiding. One was unfortunate enough to run into Harold, the other made off to the southwest. Unharmed, milord. I tried to overtake him, but the moss doesn’t really hold tracks,” Eel said with a grim expression. “And anyway, I’m no tracker. The man we need here is Tomcat, may he dwell in the light.…”

“What were they doing in the well?” Alistan Markauz asked, and Mumr held out a scrap of cloth to him without saying a word.

“A man?”

“Yes, milord, he’s dead, and his face is cut to ribbons, but I recognized him from his clothes,” Lamplighter said with a nod. “He was with Balistan Pargaid’s men at the duel.”

“Are you planning to hide from them in the Palaces of Bone, milady?”

“That won’t be necessary. In the first place, they’re no fools. Since the evil awoke on the lower levels of the burial chambers, they don’t come within a league of that place. Nothing, not even the presence of elves, would make the orcs do something as stupid as approaching the Eastern Gates of the Palaces of Bone.”

“Then we won’t delay,” said Markauz, nodding to Egrassa for him to go on ahead and show us the way.

Our group walked on into the night.

In the forest at night, darkness comes quickly and yet somehow imperceptibly. The faint, narrow path ran out from under your feet, and then the night hid it completely.

The trees, branches, and bushes dissolved into the all-enveloping blanket of darkness, leaving nothing but memories (there was a pine tree there, and there was an old maple growing there, in that patch of inky blackness) and you had to raise your eyes to the sky in order to see the silhouettes of the interwoven branches that fenced off the stars sprinkled across the heavens.

For a few long, exhausting moments, you staggered along, straining so hard to see in the pitch blackness that your eyes hurt. And then the full moon came rolling reluctantly out from behind the dark veil of night.

It looked like a thick, dark yellow disk of Isilina cheese and, just like the cheese, its broad surface was covered with holes and wrinkles. The moon brought light into the world and gave it to the night below, and the beams of the moon’s gift flooded the sleeping forest, playing over the branches and trunks of the dreaming golden-leafs, creating the moon-mother’s reflection in a slowly murmuring stream, dancing on the fields of night mist rising from the moss in white wisps and reaching upward into the air. The moonlight made the forest as beautiful and magical as a fairy tale. And the moon transformed the ruins of the ancient city of Chu.

Falling on the faces of nameless idols, gnawed away by the teeth of time, the moonlight made them look alive, firing our imaginations.

Oo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo! The hoot of an owl, or some other bird, spread in thick ripples through the beams of moonlight, echoing off the larches and golden-leafs and the walls of the dead buildings.

The whole world and the whole of Zagraba breathed gently, snared by the silver threads streaming from the spindle of the full moon. It was as light as day, and only the stars were displeased by the moon’s awakening. They all dimmed their light and crept farther away from the earth to avoid falling under the spell of the radiant lamp of night.

The group was walking briskly, and the idols of the city of Chu, who had watched us go with reproachful eyes, had been left far behind. The track wound this way and that, appearing and disappearing in the thickets of bushes. And after another hour, it disappeared completely, and we had to force our way through close-growing young fir trees.

The shaggy, prickly arms lashed at us, and we had to protect our faces with our hands and double over. While I was scrambling through these prickly, unwelcoming thickets I cursed the entire world. Mumr, who was walking in front of me now, swore viciously when Eel let go of a branch too quickly, and the fir tree’s hand slapped him across the face. I don’t think I was the only one who sighed in relief when the path reappeared among the fir trees. It ran downhill now, and the firs were soon replaced by deciduous forest. We tramped across low hills overgrown with maples and bushes of blossoming redbrow. In the sunlight the small red flowers on the bushes probably looked like drops of blood, but now, like the rest of the forest, they were painted silver by the moon.

We walked along the edge of a lake with the moon and stars reflected in its black water, climbed yet another hill and walked down again, jumping across a small stream hurrying about its urgent business. There was a lot more redbrow here than beside the lake. It was growing everywhere I looked, squeezing out the other bushes and even the trees.

“Look, there’s one left at least,” Kli-Kli muttered behind my back.

“What are you talking about?” I asked him.

“Look, over there, there’s a forest spirit among the branches. Do you see the little eyes glowing? The flinny said they’d all left the Red Spinney.”

“You mean we’re already walking through the Red Spinney?”

“Well, where do you think we are? On the Street of the Sparks?” Kli-Kli asked acidly. “It’s obvious this is the Red Spinney.”

“It doesn’t look all that red to me; you’ve got something mixed up again, Kli-Kli,” Lamplighter said with a dubious chuckle.

“Open your eyes, Mumr. It’s night now! But in the daytime, and especially in early September, everything here is covered with redbrow flowers.”

“But the place doesn’t look anything like a spinney,” I said, supporting Lamplighter.

“Fools!” the jester said sulkily, and stopped talking to us.

That night the goblin was in a bad mood. But I think he was just feeling nervous.

I wasn’t feeling anything of the kind, and Valder wasn’t saying anything. But of course, he hadn’t said anything since I had that dream about the Master’s prison. Maybe the dead archmagician had finally left me in peace and gone his own way? Ha! There wasn’t much hope of that happening.

Who was Valder? I thought I’d already told you that. Valder was a magician who had unfortunately been killed because of the Rainbow Horn a few hundred years earlier, but had now moved into my head.… All right, it’s a long story, maybe someday I’ll write my memoirs, and then you’ll know all the details.

The grassy path rustled under our feet and Lamplighter’s back loomed close in front of my eyes. How many hundreds of steps had I taken since we left the ruins of the city of Chu?

It was already long past the middle of the night, the stars were floating across the sky, and the moon was getting brighter and brighter. The entire forest had been taken over by redbrow—it was growing under almost every golden-leaf. I thought there would never be an end to these accursed bushes. But what really annoyed me was the sour smell the blossoming bushes gave off. It worked its way up my nose, and after about an hour and a half of it, my head was splitting, and I had this monstrous urge to sneeze.

The deeper we went into the Red Spinney, the tenser the silence became. I couldn’t hear the usual whisper of the wind or rustling of the branches anymore, or the calls of the night birds or the buzzing of the nocturnal insects. Not a single glowworm … and there was no more sign of any forest spirits. Nothing but the quiet rustling of our footsteps drifting into the night.

All the life of the forest seemed to have died. The silence was oppressive and it made me feel vaguely anxious. Even the moonlight looked dead now, draped across the landscape like a pale shroud.

Behind me I heard the quiet rustle of a weapon being drawn from its scabbard. I looked back. Milord Alistan was walking with his naked sword in his hand, and the count’s face looked gloomy and anxious.

“I do-on’t li-ike this si-ilence,” Kli-Kli muttered, drawing out each word.

“It’s never killed anyone yet.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Harold. It has, it definitely has,” our little know-it-all replied.

For the next half hour we didn’t say a single word to each other. Everyone was listening to the silence that enveloped everything, hoping to catch at least some kind of sound apart from the rustle of our own steps.

That’s always the way of it. You never took any notice of the sounds around you, just took them for granted. A bird chirped on one side, a cricket chirred on the other, leaves rustled somewhere else. But as soon as the sounds your ear was used to disappeared, you realized how much you missed all this outside chattering and nattering that could sometimes be so very annoying.

“We’re here,” Hallas hissed through clenched teeth, tightening his grip on his battle-mattock.

The path ran onto a bridge that looked as old as Chu. I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least if it was the work of the same builders. But unlike the city, the bridge was still intact.

It was made of stone, thirty yards long and two yards wide. Two men could easily walk across it together. Running along the sides, taking the place of railings, were stone barriers, rising up to half the height of a man. Every few yards a column rose up out of the barriers to twice the height of a man. They had probably once supported a roof (which no longer existed). Or perhaps there never had been any roof, and the columns had been put there simply as decoration.

The bridge connected the two sides of a ravine or gorge—I don’t know what it was called, but the steep sides descended almost vertically into darkness filled with a silvery mist rising from an invisible bottom.

“This is the heart of the Spinney,” Kli-Kli informed us.

“We have to cross that? Somehow it doesn’t inspire me with confidence.”

“Don’t worry, Milord Alistan, the bridge is stronger than a cliff and has stood here for thousands of years,” Miralissa reassured the captain of the royal guard. “So let us not delay.”

“Wait,” said Eel, raising one hand and peering keenly at the far bank of the Spinney. “Lady Miralissa, Egrassa, you take your bows, and Deler and I will cross to the other side.”

“Eel’s right, if there’s an ambush over there, they’ll pick us all off on the bridge like plump partridges,” said the dwarf, changing his beloved hat for his helmet.

“All right,” Alistan Markauz said curtly, and nodded. “Go.”

The dwarf ran ahead with the blade of his battle-ax glimmering ominously in the moonlight. Egrassa and Miralissa stood with their bows bent, ready to fire. The two warriors ran across the bridge and disappeared into the bushes of redbrow.

I started counting to myself. When I reached sixteen, Eel appeared and beckoned to us with his hand. It was our turn now. Very soon the only ones left on the first side were Egrassa, with his bow still bent, and Lamplighter, covering the elf against any possible danger from the rear.

“Is it a long way down?” I asked the goblin halfway across the bridge.

“I’ve never been here before, just like you.”

“It’s just that you seem to know all these places so very well.…”

“To know places, you don’t have to have been there before, Harold. How do the gnomes and the dwarves find their way through their underground labyrinths? They’re children of the mountains, and they don’t have to ask every time which way is east and which way is west. The goblins, dryads, elves, and orcs are the children of Zagraba and we never get lost in it. We always know where we are, no matter which part of the forest we happen to be in. That’s something you men can’t understand.”

We carried on along our way. The redbrow started to thin out. The fir trees and larches gradually edged the bushes aside and the cursed smell of those flowers almost disappeared, but the silence still hadn’t gone away. Our group was still in the Spinney.

We walked on and on and on. The light sack gradually began pulling me down toward the ground, the chain mail chafed my shoulders and weighed heavy on my back, my legs were tight knots of pain and fatigue. It was well past time for us to call a halt, we’d been tramping along for hours, but Egrassa only stepped up the pace, trying to get us out of the Spinney as soon as possible.

Kli-Kli was the first to sense that something was wrong. He stumbled, looked back, and drew in a sharp breath of the night air.

“Kli-Kli, please don’t stop,” Hallas said to the goblin.

“Something’s not right,” the goblin said anxiously.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” the fool muttered, and hurried on.

Then Egrassa stopped and raised his hand to tell us to make less noise. The elf listened carefully to the gloomy darkness of the nighttime forest and then said something to Miralissa in their guttural orcic tongue.

She replied in the same language, and Egrassa led us on again. The elves kept looking back. I couldn’t help myself and looked back, too, but there was nothing behind us except a narrow path silvered by moonlight and dark walls of fir trees rising up on both sides of it.

“What’s happening?” asked Alistan Markauz.

“Nothing yet, milord, just don’t fall behind,” said the elf, almost switching into a run.

Miralissa was muttering something to herself and occasionally fluttering her hands. I realized with horror that she was preparing some spell as we walked along. May the darkness drink me—could they tell us what was going on or not?

Kli-Kli was skipping along ahead of me, with his sack bouncing up and down on his back—it wasn’t easy for the little goblin to keep up with the pace set for us by Egrassa.

The goblin was whining quietly. At first I thought he was just breathing like that from the effort, but then I realized: Kli-Kli was whining in fear. And that was when I got frightened.

Very frightened.

“Kli-Kli!” I growled at him. “Give me your sack, it won’t be so hard for you keep up!”

The jester looked at me. His blue eyes were full of primal animal terror. I had to repeat what I’d said before he understood what I wanted him to do. The goblin didn’t argue, and immediately handed me the little sack with his bits and pieces in it.

“What’s going on?” I said, repeating the question I’d already asked.

“A flute!” the jester squeaked.

“In the name of darkness, what flute?”

“Just keep moving quickly, all right?”

That was all I could get out of him.

And then I heard it. And when I heard it, for the first second I couldn’t even believe it was possible. The silence was broken by a pure crystal trilling sound. It was barely even audible—the unknown flautist who was drunk enough to play in the forest at night was quite a long distance away. The flute broke the silence of the night so unexpectedly that I stopped dead on the spot and Deler crashed into me.

“Move, Harold, if you want to stay alive! I don’t know what that thing behind us is, but I’m sure it doesn’t mean us any good.”

Egrassa broke into a run. There was another trill of the flute, much closer than before, and then I realized what it was that was gaining on us. Only one creature made sounds that resembled a trilling flute so closely. And the orcs had named this monster the terrible flute, or h’san’kor.

“Sagot save us all,” I blurted out.

“That’s not very likely! Just run, Harold!”

And we ran. Each time the trilling sounded closer and closer. And those flute sounds urged us on better than any bull whip could have done. Whatever this beast that was used to frighten us in our distant childhoods might be, it was running very fast, a lot faster than us.

“I … thought … they … all … died out … long … ago … or they … were … just … a … fairy … story,” Lamplighter gasped.

He threw away his sack; the weight of his bidenhander was enough for him now. But Alistan was the one having the hardest time. The captain of the guard eventually had to give up: He threw away his helmet, then his shield, and then came the turn for his small mace. The only weapons the count was left with were his sword and dagger.

“As you see … not all of them,” Kli-Kli wheezed. “This one’s definitely alive … and hungry. He’s no fairy story.…”

“Why are we running?” I panted. “Three more minutes of this and I’ll die.”

“So he … won’t eat us … you fool! We’re waiting … for Miralissa … to work a spell!”

I wish she’d get a move on, I thought. Sagot, if you can hear me, please hurry her on a bit.

The trees fused into a single flickering blur. The world shrank to a narrow path, Kli-Kli’s back, the wheezing in my chest, Miralissa’s muttering, and the howls of a h’san’kor on the hunt. The sweat smothered my eyes, my hair was glued to my forehead. I wanted to stop, fall to the ground, and die right there. But everyone was running, and I had no choice but to keep running with them.

“Drop … both … the sacks,” Kli-Kli advised me in a squeak.

I gratefully tossed his sack away and dropped my own off my shoulders; then it was a lot easier to run. If only I could have dumped the chain mail—but for that I would have had to stop, and stopping now was the shortest way into the belly of the beast.

A flute trilled … and a second later another replied.

“There are two of them!” Kli-Kli squealed.

At that very moment Miralissa finished muttering, and the bushes on the right of the path parted to form a passage.

“That way!” the elfess gasped.

We didn’t need to be told twice. As soon as we left the path, the bushes closed together behind us and the trampled grass sprang back up as if our feet had never touched it. Our group was in a grove of fir trees, surrounded by pitch blackness. There was a strange blink and a cold tremor ran over my body.

“We’re invisible now, but lie down just in case!” Miralissa ordered. “Kli-Kli, your people know defensive spells. The magic of the elves has almost no effect on a h’san’kor. You help!”

“I don’t know anything,” the frightened goblin whinged. “Only the little bit my granddad taught me!”

“Do what you can!” the elfess hissed furiously, sprinkling some powder through the air.

Kli-Kli nodded and started spinning like a top. After ten long seconds the goblin collapsed on the ground and for a brief instant the world around us flared pink. I didn’t know what it was, but Miralissa nodded approvingly.

“Good, now don’t move, don’t even breathe. Now you’re nothing but tree roots for the flute. For a minute at least…”

She murmured the last words very, very quietly.

We really were in the mother of all fixes.

Almost nothing was known about the h’san’kor, which was only natural, since those who had encountered one didn’t usually tell anyone about it, because of their sudden death. So all our knowledge of terrible flutes amounted to no more than terrible legends from the elves and goblins about these mysterious monsters of the forest and a few engravings of bodies of flutes (I personally had no idea at all of what the beast looked like).

Two bodies of h’san’kors that were found by particularly brave trappers who wandered into the Golden Forest were sold for huge amounts of money (one went to the Order of Magicians, the other was bought by some collector). And also, about three hundred years earlier, a certain very brave and stupid baron from the Borderland had organized a h’san’kor hunt. Half of his men lost their lives, but they did manage to capture one of the monsters alive. The magicians of the Order, drooling at the mouth, were hurrying to the baron’s castle, but the flute decided not to wait. It smashed apart the cage in which it had foolishly been detained and killed everyone in the castle and the neighboring village. Then it waited for the magicians and finished off almost all of them. It turned out that battle magic had no effect at all on the beast, and so three adepts and seven acolytes were lost. It was a stroke of luck that the members of the Order included an archmagician, who killed the monster by dropping a nearby windmill on its head.

But these were tales of times long past. We didn’t happen to have an inventive archmagician or spare windmill with us. We just lay there on the ground, not moving and barely breathing. The trill of a flute sounded again. O, so close, the darkness take me! The first flute was immediately answered by a second.

“I’m a log, I’m invisible,” I whispered quietly. The hair on my head stood up in terror.

Kli-Kli gave me a very painful kick and put one finger to his lips. I blinked at him to say: I understand, not a sound.

Our refuge had a magnificent view of the path. The silence of the night was broken occasionally by trilling flutes, and the only thing I could do was pray to Sagot that we wouldn’t be noticed.

“They’re chasing someone!” Mumr whispered, earning himself a painful dig from Eel.

What I saw a moment later is etched in my memory forever.

A man came running along the path. Not even running, but flying, putting all his strength into it. The stranger’s feet were barely even touching the ground, he was moving in immense leaps to get away from the monsters pursuing him. His boot touched the ground, pushed off, and the man flew a good three yards, another touch of the ground, another long leap. I’d gladly have bet that if the lad really wanted, he could have matched the speed of a horse. A gray cloak fluttered out behind his shoulders like a night bird’s wings, his face was hidden by a hood. In his hands the man was holding a spear with a black shaft and a very broad leaf-shaped blade.

In the space of four seconds the man appeared, ran past us, and disappeared behind the trees.

And then they came.

A flute sang again, and a creature leapt out from round the corner. It ran past so quickly that I couldn’t even see it clearly—it was a blur of red, black, and green with absurdly long arms and legs. The h’san’kor was gone in an instant. The beast was too intent on pursuing its quarry to take any notice of us, and anyway, thanks to Miralissa and Kli-Kli, we had become invisible to its eyes for a while.

Another flute sounded to say that it was getting close, and the h’san’kor that had run past us replied.

The second beast burst out onto the track, unexpectedly stumbled, and stopped exactly opposite our hiding place. Its eyes, blazing with purple fire, looked in our direction. I pressed myself down into the ground. Now I could get a very good view of the creature.

The tall figure, three times the height of a man, seemed absurdly thin. It had immensely long arms and legs and the neck supporting the head was as skinny as the body. The h’san’kor’s head looked like some bizarre frog’s skull with skin tightly stretched over it.

I couldn’t see any fur or scales on the beast, its skin was entirely covered in red, black, and green stripes. The nose was a black hollow; the huge eyes filled with purple flame covered half the face; there were short, curled horns on the head; and the mouth … For some reason I’d thought it would be filled with teeth, but when the beast parted its lips and grinned, I saw it had no more than five crooked, yellow stumps in its jaws. No armor or clothing, but one clawed hand was clutching something like a spiked club, and in its left hand it was holding the sack I had abandoned only five minutes earlier.

I felt icy worms stir in my stomach. It had to see us now! But it mustn’t see us!

The beast raised the sack to its nose, sniffed at it, snorted, and tossed it away.

Somewhere in the distance a flute played a triumphant melody—evidently the first beast had finally overtaken the man. Distracted, the h’san’kor lowered its head to one side and started listening to its comrade’s call. The triumphant trill suddenly changed to a bellow of pain, and once again the nighttime forest was filled with deafening silence.

Lamplighter was lying next to me and I could hear his heart pounding. But the question hammering through my mind was: Why had the beast bellowed so loudly? Obviously I was not the only one worried about this. The h’san’kor took several uncertain steps along the path in the direction that the bellow had come from.…

Suddenly the world flashed pink again, the prickly shivers running across my body disappeared, Miralissa and Kli-Kli’s spells vanished, and … the monster saw us. With a menacing growl the beast moved toward us, parting the bushes.

“Scatter!” shouted Miralissa, already on her feet. “Attack from all sides, all together!”

I was scared absolutely witless. The elfess was chanting a spell, the soldiers fell back, drawing the h’san’kor on, and I watched as the beast advanced on us, like death come to life. The lilac flame in the flute’s eyes was burning with a hungry glow.

Egrassa’s arrow whistled through the air and I recovered my senses.

“Shoot, Harold!” he shouted to me.

I shot on target, the bolts slammed precisely into the forest monster’s chest, and I started reloading the crossbow, but this time with ice bolts, because the ordinary ones had no effect, just like the elf’s arrows—there were already at least six stuck in the monster, but it didn’t seem to be bothered in the least.

A green wall flared up in front of the h’san’kor (just like the one that Miralissa had created at the lair of the Nameless One’s servants). The monster stopped and roared so loudly that my ears popped, and slammed its club down on the magical barrier. It was obviously some special kind of club, because the wall shuddered visibly.

“I can’t hold it for long!” the elfess shouted. “Egrassa, Harold, go for the eyes! Put out its eyes!”

By this time, the elf had stuck the h’san’kor with arrows all the way up to the top of its head. The monster took a step back and then attacked the wall again. The elfess groaned with the strain of trying to maintain the barrier. I unloaded the crossbow into the beast and the ice bolts exploded without causing our enemy the slightest harm.

“Battle magic doesn’t work on it!” cried Kli-Kli, flinging his first pair of throwing knives. “Ordinary bolts! Go for the eyes!”

“I’m out of arrows!” shouted Egrassa.

Another roar, a blow, a flash of green from the wall, and a muffled groan from Miralissa.

“Take mine!” the elfess shouted, and started desperately whispering a new spell.

Egrassa dashed across to her. Kli-Kli parted with another knife.… The h’san’kor seemed to understand human speech perfectly well. It saw me aiming at its most vulnerable spot, stopped storming the wall between us, and, at the very moment when I pressed both triggers, it put one hand over its eyes.

Smack! Smack! Both bolts stuck in its hand. The beast gave me a malicious glance that promised a thousand years of torment when it got its hands on me, and smashed its club down on the wall again. The wall moaned pitifully, but still stood firm.

Twang! Twang! The elf’s bowstring sang out again. One arrow went into the beast’s mouth, the other stuck in its head, by some miracle just missing its eye. The next arrow loosed by Egrassa burned up in the air before it even reached its target. And the same fate overtook my bolt.

So this vile monster could use magic, too?

“It’s useless!” cried the elf, baring his s’kash.

Kli-Kli howled and spun like a top, working a spell. Miralissa finished her own magic, and by the light of the moon and a small fire lit by the gnome, all the grass around rose up into the air, gathered together in the form of a huge knife blade, and struck at the flute’s chest.

It didn’t work. The knife fell and scattered into harmless tiny scraps of green. Alistan Markauz swore; the monster chuckled triumphantly and smashed its club down on the wall that was barely holding up.

Bang-bang! Two shots from a pistol fused into one, distracting Kli-Kli from his spell.

Hallas was wreathed in vile-smelling gunpowder smoke. Our enemy’s left eye burst and went blank, and the h’san’kor roared in pain and fury. The second ball hit a little lower, passing through the h’san’kor’s neck. Its body was already black from the blood oozing from dozens of wounds, and now the life started pulsing out of its neck in sharp spurts. Good old Hallas—he had realized that the flute’s spell might work on arrows and crossbow bolts, but balls—or bullets, as he called them—could pierce the magical barrier. And they had.

Bang!

The gnome was a skilled master of his weapon, and this time the monster’s right eye went blank. But I was astounded to see the h’san’kor still standing firmly on its feet. Blinded, and howling like a hundred sinners roasting on a skillet, it flung itself at the wall.

The wall flared up brightly for the final time, and shattered into a thousand bright green shards. I thought my head would explode from the terrible ringing sound. Three fir trees standing close to the demolished wall burst into green flame, burning from the ground right up to the top of their crowns and illuminating the forest with a green light.

Deler was howling and rolling around on the ground—his jacket had caught fire. Eel dashed over to the dwarf and started beating out the flames on his back. The fire roared as it devoured the trees. The h’san’kor shrieked piercingly and flailed blindly in front of itself with its club, hoping to catch one of us.

“Everybody back! Over here, quick!” Hallas yelled.

Eel helped Deler to his feet and they ran into the forest. Alistan and Egrassa picked up Miralissa, who was lying on the ground, and carried her away from the monster. I went running after them—this was no time to hang about, the gnome might have another surprise up his sleeve.

“Get down!” Hallas shouted, and we all dropped to the ground.

“This way, you ugly brute! Come to me!” Beside the howling h’san’kor the gnome looked like some little bug.

The beast smashed its club blindly against the ground and walked toward the voice.

“Well? Here I am! Catch me, you horned bastard!”

The h’san’kor growled something, and its weapon reduced the nearest young fir tree to a million tiny chips of wood. When the flute drew level with the little fire that Hallas had lit, the gnome tossed something into the flames and ran with all the speed his little legs could muster.

A brilliant flash lit up the forest and for a moment I was completely blinded. Then there was a deafening bang, flames went soaring right up to the sky, and I definitely felt the earth shake.

When the bright spots cleared from in front of my eyes I saw before me the scene of destruction caused by Hallas’s unknown weapon. The fir trees were still burning and there was more than enough light to make out what was happening all around us. The gnome was standing on all fours, shaking his head furiously. The victor’s face was covered in blood and his eyebrows were singed. A hole had appeared in the ground at the spot where the fire had been burning a few moments earlier. The h’san’kor was lying beside it. The blast had torn off both its legs, but the monster was still trying to reach for its club.

“That beast’s hard to kill!” exclaimed Mumr, adjusting his grip on the hilt of his sword.

“Cut its head off!” Egrassa shouted from somewhere behind him.

“Harold, you help Hallas!” Deler told me, picking up his battle-ax.

Eel, Deler, Alistan Markauz, and Lamplighter all dashed to the h’san’kor.

“Are you all right?” I asked, helping the gnome get up.

“I can’t hear a damn thing, Harold!” the gnome roared, and shook his head. “Not a damn thing!”

Meanwhile Milord Alistan bounded up to the monster and plunged his sword into its chest with all his strength. The monster roared and swung its hand blindly. The blow caught the count on his chest plate and knocked him off his feet.

Mumr swung his sword and halted the hand that was raised to strike at Milord again. The bidenhander sliced through the h’san’kor’s wrist, leaving the hand dangling by a scrap of skin. Eel thrust his “brother” and “sister” into the beast’s other hand, pinning it to the ground, and Deler took a wide swing and buried the crescent-shaped blade of his battle-ax in the h’san’kor’s forehead.

The beast howled and shrieked, waving the stump of its arm, with blood pouring out of it. Mumr darted over to the hand that Eel had pinned to the ground, and hacked the arm off at the shoulder with three stout blows.

“Die! Die! Die, will you, you bastard!” said the dwarf, raining down blows on the h’san’kor’s head.

The heavy weapon pulped flesh and crushed bone. The flute twitched … but it was still alive. Breathy gasps and incomprehensible fragments of phrases came out of the monster’s mouth. I suspected it was about to treat us to another spell. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“Cut its damn head off at last, will you!” Kli-Kli shrieked.

“Harold, where’s my mattock?” asked Hallas, pressing his left hand to his split eyebrow and trying to push me away with his right.

“Calm down, they’ll manage!”

“Oh, sure they will. Get its head off, you idiots!”

“Deler, you go right!” Mumr barked, swinging the bidenhander back above his head. “Eel, milord! Cut off its stump, so that it can’t jerk about! Here we go! Hey-yah!”

The bidenhander smashed down on the monster’s neck. Then the battle-ax. Then the two-handed sword again. The dwarf and the man started hacking away like lumberjacks. When Deler brought down his battle-ax for the third time, the h’san’kor fell silent. This time, forever.

Deler swore in the gnomic language and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. “That was hot work! Hallas, how are you?”

“What? Alive! And how’s your back?”

“My jacket’s ruined,” the dwarf said, making a wry face, and set his battle-ax on his shoulder.

The fir trees were still burning, but the magical green flames had already given way to ordinary ones.

“Tell me, my friend Hallas, what was that you threw into the fire?” Kli-Kli asked the gnome thoughtfully as he studied the hole blasted into the ground.

“Speak louder!”

“What did you fling in the fire?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” the gnome snapped. “The powder horn, that’s what! Thanks to that brute all I’ve got left is one loaded pistol! But never mind.… Damn the pistol, the important thing is that everyone’s still alive. When I tell the lads back in the Giant I felled a h’san’kor, they’ll never believe me!”

“You felled it? If Lamplighter and me hadn’t lopped its head off, you’d have more to worry about than a singed beard!” Deler didn’t intend to miss out on the credit for a heroic feat like this.

“Have you not forgotten about the first monster, milord?” I asked Alistan Markauz. “Somewhere up ahead there’s another one just like this, only that one’s alive!”

“I don’t think we need worry about that flute, Harold,” Egrassa said in a quiet voice. “If the h’san’kor were alive, all the noise we made would have brought it here.”

“Could that man really have killed it?” Hallas simply couldn’t believe the idea.

“Apparently so.”

“Then he’s even more dangerous than a flute,” Eel declared. “How is Lady Miralissa?”

The Garrakian’s question hung in the air and everyone looked at the dark elf, who had stayed with the elfess all this time.

“She’s all right now,” Egrassa replied, hanging his s’kash behind his shoulder.