Shadow Blizzard (67 page)

“What are you doing here?” the guardsman asked.

“We need to get into the city, milord. Can you help us?”

“I doubt it. Only the gates in the northern wall can be opened. All the others are blocked off. And fighting your way right across the battlefield to the other side of the city is far too difficult.”

“Look!” someone gasped.

There was certainly something to look at. Two immense purple spheres were flying slowly above the men engaged in furious battle, heading toward the city. These spheres were much larger than the one that Lafresa had thrown at our ferry when we were crossing the Iselina. The first one touched the wall and exploded with a tremendous rumbling blast that almost knocked me off my feet. Flames, smoke, stones, and men were sent flying up to the heavens, and a breach about fifty yards across appeared in the wall. Then a little cloud of blue light appeared beside the second sphere and lashed out at the Nameless One’s creation. The purple sphere went flying back in the direction it had come from and exploded when it crashed into a crowd of giants.

“Those magic-mongers can do it when they want to,” the gnome chuckled in delight, rubbing his hands together.

“Bugler! It’s time! Sound the attack!” the commander of the guards shouted. “I don’t know who you are, gentlemen, but I wish you luck.”

“One question, milord! Are there any boats on the seashore?”

“I don’t know, elf!”

The hundred-strong unit of horsemen went tearing out of the wood and into battle to the sound of the bugle.

The wood—which wasn’t really a wood, just a big copse—was quiet. We didn’t run into any more surprises. But when we came out of the wood and were almost at the sea (I could already smell the salt in the air), we had the absolutely outrageous bad luck to run into two giants. Darkness only knew what these blue-skinned brutes were doing so far away from the battle, but when they saw us, they grabbed their clubs and started moving in our direction at a brisk trot.

“Get back!” Eel barked. “We can’t handle them! Into the trees! Into the trees!”

I swear by Sagot that the lads who were running at us were a good eight yards tall. Their blue, hairy skin did nothing to render these wonders of nature any more charming. And a glance at their clubs was enough to dispel even the slightest desire to make these creatures’ acquaintance. So our group promptly swung its horses round and went hurtling back to the wood. When I reached the trees, I looked back and saw that Kli-Kli wasn’t trying to run. The gobliness’s mare was fleeing in panic, but the girl was down on her knees almost under the very feet of the giants, drawing a picture in the snow. Ah, may the demons have me! What a time to take up drawing!

I swore and pulled hard on the bridle. The little green fool had to be saved! I rode my horse straight toward the gobliness, ignoring the warning shouts that rang out behind my back.

The giants had already reached Kli-Kli, and one of them raised his huge club above her head. Beside them, Glo-Glo’s granddaughter looked especially small. I shouted for her to get out of there. Kli-Kli finished her picture, looked up, and pointed a finger at the giants.

Something that looked like a hammer made out of smoke appeared in the air and struck the monsters mighty blows in the chest. The blue-skinned giants were flung back more than a hundred yards, as if they weighed nothing at all. Whatever it was the gobliness had conjured up, it seemed to have knocked the life out of them.

“Have you completely lost your wits?” I yelled at her as I reined in my horse.

She gave me one of her most stupid smiles.

“There, that’s the Hammer of Dust, not some silly little cheap trick!” she said in a trembling voice, and flopped over in a dead faint.

I cursed all the gods and got down off my horse.

Egrassa and company had already ridden up.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s all right! It must be the effect of the spell.”

Hallas jumped down off Lamplighter’s horse and started briskly rubbing the gobliness’s face with snow. She immediately came round and asked the gnome to save the sloppy stuff for some other time.

“Are you able to stay in the saddle?” Eel asked her.

“If you’re willing to share your horse. Those giants frightened my nag, we’ll never catch her now.”

There was a bang and rumble on the other side of the wood. The magicians were up to their tricks again.

“It’s not far to the sea. If we want to get into the city, we need to hurry.”

The sea was very close. Like the Suburb, the fishing village had been burnt, in case the enemy tried to use the building materials to make siege engines. But there was a perfectly good fishing boat lying on the shore. The moment Hallas saw the sea and the waves, his face turned sour and he declared that this tub, which was the only thing any intelligent person could call it, would sink as soon as it put to sea.

But we never got closer than ten yards to the boat. Three figures in gray cloaks blocked our way. One was an orc, but the other two were men. They were all armed, and all wearing smoky gray crystals on silver chains round their necks. The Gray Ones had managed to turn up at just the wrong moment.

There was a rustling sound as Eel’s “brother” and “sister” were drawn out of their scabbards. Egrassa gestured to the Garrakian to stop, and shook his head in warning. There was no way we could handle three Gray Ones, no matter how hard we tried. We looked at them. They looked at us. The leaden waves of the gray sea boomed beside us.

“Give us the Horn,” said one of the men. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

“Or to you. It doesn’t belong to anyone,” Kli-Kli replied. “But we need it right now.”

“If the artifact stays with you, the balance may be disrupted.”

“What balance are we talking about here?” Eel asked furiously. “Have you seen what’s happening over by the city?”

“We ask you one last time to give us the Horn.”

“And what if we don’t? What then, orc?” Egrassa said with a dark laugh, tightening his grip on the krasta.

“I also advise you to return our brother’s crystal and weapon,” the Gray One continued as imperturbably as ever.

And then it happened. There was a deafening boom and four men carrying the staffs of archmagicians of the Order appeared out of thin air. One of the Gray Ones was killed instantly. The other two leapt nimbly to one side. The orc threw himself at the nearest magician and the man who was still alive drew a pair of twin swords. The orc took the magician with him when he died.

Two of the magicians went to work on the surviving Gray One. He dashed at the nearest archmagician, waving his sword, but a staff barred his way. There was a brief flash, and the Gray One went flying back to the very edge of the sea. Egrassa fired with his bow and hit the man in the back as he was getting up off the gravel. As the Gray One turned to face this new danger, the archmagicians cast a magical net, burning with emerald green fire, over him. The spell cut him into ten separate pieces. I looked away.

“We were lucky they were soldiers, and not magicians,” Kli-Kli muttered. “If the Gray Ones had known any magic, the magicians wouldn’t have had it so easy.”

One of the archmagicians, who was quite young and looked a bit like Valder, came running over to us.

“Did you get the Horn?”

“Yes, Your Magicship,” Egrassa said, bowing.

“This is no time for etiquette, elf!” the magician snapped brusquely. “We received your message, and the entire Council is already assembled! Where is the artifact?”

I reached into my bag. We heard a series of explosions from the direction of the city.

“Another hour, and there will be nothing left to save. Quickly!”

The archmagician grabbed the Horn out of my hands. There was another boom, and the three magicians disappeared, without even bothering to take their dead comrade’s body with them. Naturally, they didn’t invite us along.

“And now what do we do?” Hallas asked acidly.

“Now?” said Egrassa, peering thoughtfully at the sea. “Now we wait.”

We stayed there on the cold and windy seashore.

To wait.

*   *   *

The war against the Nameless One ended as suddenly as it had begun. The surviving members of the Council of the Order did the job right and pumped the Horn full of power right up to the brim. The sorcerer immediately lost all his ability to work magic, and without sorcery the Nameless One’s army was just an army, but we had the Order on our side.

The giants sensed that their master had lost his power and fled in fear. The ogres who had come to Valiostr had been killed much earlier by the magicians’ spell, so most of our enemies were men—barbarians, warriors of the northern tribes, the remains of the army of the Crayfish Dukedom, and a whole heap of other rabble. They still outnumbered our soldiers by a long way, but despite the breach in the wall, the bombardment of the city from catapults, and the terrible attacks by the sorcerer’s shamans, who had not lost their powers, Avendoom stood firm.

The battle continued for another five days, quieting down and then flaring up again. On the second day the young king withdrew all his forces into the city, after deciding not to take the field for a general engagement. The gnomes took all the cannons out of the Bastion and put them on the city walls, and the defensive action began.

There were days when one section or another of the wall changed hands six or seven times. We were thrown back, we forced the attackers back outside the wall, then they came at us again. And it went on and on like that forever. We came close to losing everything when the Nameless One’s supporters among the inhabitants of the city almost got their hands on the Rainbow Horn. But Artsivus was guarding the artifact like the apple of his eye, and the traitors were met with magic and stern steel. The supporters of the Nameless One who were stupid enough to surrender were quartered or hanged on the city wall as a lesson to the aggressors.

We suffered losses, but we stood firm. On one absolutely beautiful December day we heard the roar of battle horns, and the Second Army of the South arrived, together with the First Army of the West and the Third Assault Army, reinforced by the lads from Miranueh and volunteers from Isilia. Together they struck the unsuspecting enemy a mighty blow in the rear.

Stalkon gathered all his forces together and led them out from behind the walls, hitting the enemy smack between the eyes. Our opponents still had a numerical advantage but they faltered and ran. And the Nameless One didn’t hang about for a little chat with the Order, either, he took off with his heels twinkling. The army drove the retreating enemy to the north and out past the Lonely Giant.

Everybody agreed about one thing: It would be a long time before the Nameless One recovered from a blow like this, and he wouldn’t try to attack the kingdom again for another five or six hundred years at least. We would have to hope that if the sorcerer did get it into his head to come back and snap at Valiostr’s heels again, the Order wouldn’t waste any time getting the Rainbow Horn out of its old cobweb-covered trunk.

While the army was busy with the war in the north and polishing off everyone who still needed to be polished off, the capital gradually returned to normal. Every citizen walked around with a happy and contented look, as if he personally had stuffed the Rainbow Horn up that cursed sorcerer’s backside.

Well, we had our victory, but life had to go on somehow. And the army had to be fed and maintained. Surprisingly enough, now when the people gave their hard-earned money to the king’s tax collectors, they hardly even complained. Somehow everybody seemed to have grasped that it was better to have a strong, well-fed army than have the Nameless One on their back. I remember that For once uttered the memorable phrase: “A kingdom sometimes needs a war to buck its ideas up and dust it off.” My old teacher, now living in distant Garrak, was probably right. War is a terrible thing, but afterward you see many things through different eyes.

People gradually came back to the city; they listened to the town criers in the squares telling everyone about the army’s victories in the north, and the victories of the united forces of Valiostr, the Border Kingdom, and the dark elves over the orcs in the south; restored the houses that had been ruined in the war; and put their lives back together. Everything was gradually going back to the way it used to be.

But for our little group, everything went topsy-turvy. As soon as the magicians had dealt with their business (i.e., the Nameless One), they turned their attention to me. They detailed my old friend Roderick to stay with me, and he followed good old Harold around like a tail. But, to be quite serious, they stuck every member of our group in the royal palace for a month. I don’t know what they did with the others, but I personally was questioned three times a day by one of the archmagicians. They were mostly interested in Hrad Spein. The archmagicians asked their questions, I gave them answers, and Roderick wrote it all down. And on and on like that forever. I was fortunate enough to see Artsivus twice.

The old man’s health had deteriorated while I was on my journey. He had lost weight and his cough was even worse; he was always huddling under a warm rug and shivering. Roderick brought his teacher medicine all the time. I felt sorry for the Master of the Order, and a blind man could have seen what an effort those conversations cost him. The archmagician asked me questions, too, but they were far more ticklish than the others, and I had to prevaricate and lie a bit. I didn’t want to tell the Order about the Master, the World of Chaos, and other stuff like that.

It seemed to me that I’d told the Order everything I could, but the magicians just kept on and on asking questions. I had to tell them everything a second time, then a third time, and even a fourth. They dragged everything out of me, every last little detail, and there was no end in sight.

I hardly ever saw my friends. Only Kli-Kli, who had taken the young king under her wing (that was what she told me) sometimes dropped in to see me and share the news. Hallas, Eel, and Lamplighter were with the Wild Hearts who had survived the Lonely Giant and the Field of Fairies. Sagot be praised, Honeycomb and Invincible had survived the battle of Avendoom and now they were also with their friends. For the time being the king was keeping the Wild Hearts near him.