Shadow Blizzard (36 page)

That meant I could see less, and now it was hard to make out what might be hidden behind the red and gold wall of leaves and the stockade of tree trunks. Add to the list of difficulties the onset of twilight, threatening to give way to another pitch-dark night at any moment, and things weren’t looking very good. But the smell of smoke was growing stronger, and that told me I was going in the right direction.

A twig cracked treacherously under my foot. The crunch could hardly be heard, but I froze. Ah, that was bad timing! I could thank my thief’s luck that I was still too far from the fire and I couldn’t have been heard.

You ought to be more careful, Harold, I thought for the hundredth time, shifting the knife from my right hand to my left and wiping away the sweat that had suddenly appeared on my palm. It was a long time since I’d felt so nervous. I was just like a novice, preparing to rob his first passerby!

Finally the flames of a campfire blinked between the trunks of the trees. I darted over to the nearest golden-leaf, pressed myself back against the trunk, and started staring into the thickening twilight. The fire blinked again, trembled, disappeared, and then reappeared.

“Careful, Harold! Careful! Make haste slowly!”

Twilight had given way to night. The smell of food cooking, the smell of meat, which I hadn’t tasted for a hundred years, tormented my mind and set my stomach gurgling. The fire lured me toward it, and I approached it cautiously, getting closer and closer. Quietly, inconspicuously.

When the fire was still about fifty yards away, I stopped, hiding behind another tree trunk. I tried hard to make out who was sitting round the fire, but I couldn’t. The view from my cover wasn’t very good, and I couldn’t see anything but gleaming reflections of firelight.

I took a step forward and the sky immediately fell in on me, crashing down with all its weight on my back and burying my nose in the leaves. I jerked and tried to strike out blindly with my knife, but some excessively nimble individual was impolite enough to step on my hand.

I howled and unclenched my fingers. They were more precious to me than the knife. I tried to turn over, but I couldn’t. There was no point in kicking out—the person who had dropped on me out of the tree was perched precisely on my shoulder blades, and I couldn’t reach him with my feet. And I couldn’t throw him off, either—the lousy skunk was really heavy.

I only stopped flapping about when a second enemy sat on my legs and twisted my left arm behind my back. I howled—the lad had almost twisted my arm out of its socket. Then it was my right arm’s turn, but I’d already wised up and stopped resisting, so this time the procedure wasn’t quite so painful.

Whoever it was sitting on my back didn’t say anything, he just kept his huge paw on the back of my neck, making me breathe the smell of moldy leaves and damp earth. Meanwhile, the second one tied my wrists securely with rope. It was all done quickly and without a single word being spoken.

Wonderful! Eventually the one who was sitting on my legs got up, but his comrade grabbed me by the hair, jerked my head up, and then put something sharp and horribly cold against my throat. I thought it wisest to stare up at the sky and say nothing.

“Well, well, well,” said the one who was standing. “It looks like a foolish moth has come fluttering to the flame.… Who have the forest spirits sent to our fire?”

“A little monkey, I think,” said the one who was holding me by the hair.

“Turn him over.”

I was turned over rather offhandedly, but just to make sure I didn’t start thrashing about, a foot was prudently placed on my chest so that I could hardly draw breath.

I couldn’t make out who was standing over me. They were just dark silhouettes. Either men, or elves, or orcs.

“It really is a monkey,” chuckled the one who had turned me over.
“Karadr drag su’in tar?”
[Shall we dispatch him to the darkness?]

“Kro! Alle bar natish, kita’l u Bagard.”
[No! Let’s take him to the fire. Bagard can get to the bottom of this.]

Darkness only knew what the lads were bantering about, but that language was definitely orcish. On the rational assumption that men were unlikely to chat in such a disgusting language, I struck them off the list. That only left elves and orcs. Meanwhile the two of them kept on yakking to each other, and one of them kept saying
“kro”
all the time, while the other kept mentioning some
“tara”
or other. The lads didn’t seem able to agree about something. I tried to weigh in with my own sound opinion, and moved a little. The lad standing with his foot on me immediately pressed it down a bit harder and I gave a disappointed croak and shut up. Eventually the one who kept saying
“tara”
gave in.

“All right, what’s one more or less? We’ll take him.” These words were spoken for my ears.

I was jerked to my feet.

“If you so much as twitch, little moth, you’ll never reach the fire. We’ll singe your wings for you right here. Is that clear, or do I have to hit you?”

“I understand.”

“That’s just great.” I was pushed in the back rather impolitely.
“Misat’u no alddi Olag.”
[Keep an eye on the moth, Olag.]

“Misat’a.”
[I’ll keep an eye on him.]

What a fool. Somehow it hadn’t even occurred to me that there could be listening posts and sentries around the fire.

Well, my captors were right—I had fluttered to the flame like a moth, and I’d got my wings singed.

13

IN CAPTIVITY

My companions were not distinguished by refined manners, and while the one who had been sitting on my legs merely hurried me along, the other one kept pushing me in the back so that I almost fell. Eventually we came out into the large forest clearing where the fire was burning. There were about ten men (or not men) sitting round the fire. A few more were standing or lying some distance away, and I simply wasn’t able to count them. A large group.

“Ghei Bagard! Masat’u ner ashpa tut Olag’e perega!”
[Hey, Bagard! Look who me and Olag have caught!] Hefty shouted.

The figures round the fire stirred and got to their feet. I was shoved closer to the fire. The lads who had captured me had dark skin, yellow eyes, black lips, fangs, and ash-gray hair.

“Elves!” I thought delightedly, and then I took a closer look and felt very, very disappointed. My fears had been justified. Of the two possible evils, I’d ended up with the worse one. Elves never gathered their hair into ponytails, elves weren’t so heavily built, and elves never carried yataghans.

Firstborn! I’d fallen into the hands of the orcs! But I had been just a little bit lucky; the badges on the yellowish brown clothes of the Firstborn belonged to the clan of Walkers Along the Stream, and that was a lot better than running into the Grun Ear-Cutters. At least they wouldn’t kill me straightaway.

“Where did you find this?” asked a short orc.

“He was wandering round the fire, Bagard,” said Hefty’s friend, switching into human language.

“Was the little monkey alone?”

“Yes. Before we took him, we checked the whole area. He was alone. Olag can confirm that.”

Hefty’s friend nodded. The orcs switched back into their own language, talking fast. I stood there like a sheep, waiting to see what would come of all this rigmarole. Bagard seemed to be in charge of this detachment; he spoke a few abrupt phrases and six Firstborn disappeared into the dark undergrowth.

“Weapons?” Bagard asked, switching back to human language.

Olag handed the commander my knife. Bagard twirled it in his hands impassively and handed it to one of the orcs standing beside him.

“Is that all, Fagred?” The Firstborn seemed a little surprised.

“Yes,” said Hefty, nodding.

“Have you searched him?”

“Kro.”

“He doesn’t look much like a warrior,” said one of the orcs.

“We’ll soon find out, bring him over to the fire!”

Fagred and Olag grabbed me by the arms and dragged me to the fire. Naturally enough, I thought they were going to roast the soles of my feet, and I started to resist, but the orc who had taken my knife hit me hard under the ribs and I suddenly didn’t feel like resisting anymore. The only concern I had now was trying to breathe. They sat me down by the fire and Fagred started asking questions.

“Who are you? How many of you are there? What are you doing in our forest?”

The orc backed up each question with a resounding slap to my face. Bearing in mind the size of his mitts—and the orc was every bit as big as Honeycomb—I felt justified in worrying whether my head could take the strain. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to answer, because the slaps rained down on me as fast as the questions. And the questions followed one another at a very brisk rate indeed. When Fagred started asking them for the fifth time, growing more and more enraged at my silence, Bagard’s voice interrupted.

“That’s enough!”

Fagred muttered discontentedly and walked away.

“Search him.”

They stood me on my feet again, took my bag, and rummaged adroitly through my clothes.

“Nedl kro.”
[Nothing there.]

“I told you he didn’t look like a warrior,” one of the orcs muttered, and threw some fir-tree branches into the fire.

By this time the six warriors sent to reconnoiter by Bagard had come back. One of the Firstborn shook his head and put an arrow back in his quiver.

“If he doesn’t look like a warrior…” Bagard’s yellow eyes studied me intently. “Shokren, check this monkey!”

An orc walked out of the shadow, and I turned cold—the lad was wearing a strange headdress that looked far too much like a shaman’s cap. And a shaman was just what I needed to make my day complete! Shokren resembled Bagard in some elusive way; they must have been relatives. The shaman came over and ran his open palm over me without touching me.

“His neck,” Shokren murmured, and someone’s deft hands relieved me of Kli-Kli’s drop-shaped medallion. The shaman nodded contentedly. “The left arm.”

Egrassa’s bracelet joined Kli-Kli’s medallion on the ground.

Shokren took his hand down to the level of my boots and said, “That’s all, he’s clean.”

“What are these trinkets?” asked Olag, twirling the bracelet of red copper in his hands.

“That’s a long story,” said Shokren, putting the droplet medallion away in his bag. Then he took the bracelet out of Olag’s hands.

He held it for a while, studying it closely, then threw it on the grass and said, “Everybody get back!”

The orcs obediently stepped away and Olag took it on himself to take care of me and dragged me with him. Meanwhile the shaman muttered something, formed the fingers of his left hand into a complicated sign, and Egrassa’s bracelet melted, turning into a small puddle on the ground.

“They won’t find you now, little monkey,” the shaman sneered.

“A leash?” Bagard asked Shokren with a knowing air.

“Yes.”

“The inferior ones?

“Probably.”

The inferior ones? Unless I was mistaken, that was what the Firstborn called the elves. Anyway, now it would be rather difficult for Egrassa to find me.

“So our moth is mixed up with that bunch, is he?” Fagred said with an ominous leer.

“Give me his bag,” the shaman suddenly said.

One of the Firstborn immediately handed my bag to Shokren. Do I need to say what happened when the shaman took the Rainbow Horn out of it? Naturally, the ordinary orcs didn’t understand a thing, but Shokren, Bagard, and Olag exchanged pointed glances. And the shaman’s hands were actually shaking.

“What is it?” asked Fagred, craning his neck.

“It’s something that will help the Hand in his battle with the inferior ones,” Bagard said reverently. “Remember this day, warriors.”

“Well done, moth!” Olag said with a crooked sneer. “What other treasures have you brought for us?”

Shokren carefully set the Horn down on a cloak that one of the warriors had spread out, and turned his attention back to my bag. The handful of fruit was flung aside disdainfully, and then the Key emerged from the bag. The dragon’s tear glinted in the light of the campfire and the Firstborn all gasped as one in wonder and delight. They seemed to know what the shaman was clutching in his hand. He took the relic between his finger and thumb, as if he was afraid it might simply disappear.

“The Key to the Doors!” one of the warriors gasped.

“Correct. But how did a man come to have the inferior ones’ relic?” said Shokren, looking at me. “Have you been in Hrad Spein?”

“Yes.” I couldn’t see any point in lying.

“Is that from there?” the shaman asked, nodding at the Horn.

“Yes.”

“All right.” The shaman seemed to be quite satisfied with my monosyllabic answers.

“Has the moth brought us any more presents?” Fagred inquired.

The shaman turned my bag upside down without saying anything, and an emerald rain cascaded down onto the orcish cloak. One of the Firstborn cleared his throat quietly.

“What shall we do with him, Bagard?” Fagred asked.

The commander of the detachment shrugged indifferently.

“We don’t need any extra mouths.”

The huge orc gave a knowing chuckle and put his hand on his knife.

“Wait, Bagard,” said Shokren, unhurriedly putting all the treasures back into the bag. “This little monkey’s not as simple as he seems. When we have time, I’ll have a talk with him, and I think the Hand will, too.”

“The Hand is far away,” Bagard said with a frown.

For some reason the orcs didn’t seem to want to talk their own language.

“I’ll send him a message by raven, he can decide what to do with all these things. In any case, the moth will make a good wager at the mid-autumn festival. Put the little monkey with the others.”

“All right,” Bagard agreed, and started speaking in orcish.