Shadow Prowler

The road wound between the low hills, sometimes climbing up onto one of them and then immediately, without pausing, diving downward again. Smooth ascents alternated with equally smooth descents, and the journey continued like that for quite a long time.

The forest along the sides of the road grew thicker and the trunks of the trees crowded closer together, hiding almost all the sky behind their leaves. The low, crooked pines gave up their place in the sun to aspens and birches. All the ground in the forest along the road and on the surrounding hills was covered with bushy undergrowth. Now at last, thanks to the dense wall of trees, we had some blessed coolness—the weakened rays of the sun no longer lashed our shoulders like red-hot whips; everybody heaved a sigh of relief and Arnkh hurried to put his beloved chain mail back on, now that he had the opportunity.

For the next hour we rode in the relative coolness of the welcoming forest.

But our good mood didn’t last for long. How could it? As yet, we still knew nothing about the missing Tomcat and Egrassa, or about Alistan and Eel. What reason did we have for feeling jolly?

And so everyone was tense and taciturn. Lamplighter completely forgot about his beloved reed pipe. Kli-Kli didn’t crack any of his eternal dim-witted jokes, and even Deler and Hallas stopped arguing, which was something absolutely unheard of since the very begi

As soon as the road climbed the next low hill and the wall of the forest no longer blocked the view, one of my companions was certain to look back. But the road was still empty, and we rode on, gradually becoming ever more sullen.

Miralissa and Ell talked about something in low voices and she occasionally chewed on her lips, either in frustration or fury. Waiting is the worst thing of all. I know that from my own experience.

At a place where a stream crossed the road, Miralissa said, “We’ll stop on that hill.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the empty road for perhaps the hundredth time that day. “We’ll make a halt there.”

“Alrighty,” said Uncle, supporting the elfess’s proposal. “We need a rest. It’ll be evening soon, and we’re still riding hard.”

Uncle was right. My back was aching outrageously after galloping for so long. What I really wanted to do was get down off Little Bee, lie on the grass, and have a good stretch.

“Harold,” said Lamplighter, riding up and distracting me from my daydreams, “do you think Milord Alistan will manage to catch up with us?”

“I don’t know, Mumr,” I replied wearily. “It’s not evening yet.”

“I hope Miralissa won’t be foolish enough to send anyone else on these dubious reco

I was also hoping very much that the dark elfess’s sense of reason was in good working order. If anyone else left the party, our numbers would be reduced to a laughable level. Our group needed to stay together for as long as possible.

The road started ru

“A halt,” said Loudmouth, jumping down smartly from his horse to the ground.

“I don’t think so,” said Miralissa, shaking her head. “Get back in the saddle.”

I followed her gaze. Up ahead of us, a little more than a league away, there were several columns of thick smoke rising up out of the forest.

“What is it?” asked Uncle, screwing up his eyes.

“As far as I recall, it’s Vishki, a small village, maybe forty or forty-five households,” Honeycomb replied.

“And what’s there that could burn like that?” asked Deler, reaching for his poleax again without even realizing it.

“Well, it’s definitely not the houses, the smoke’s too black, as if they’re burning coal,” said Hallas, puffing stubbornly on his pipe.

“Get ready, lads! Put your armor on, and we’ll find out what the fire’s eating down there!” Uncle instructed.

“And I’d like to know what swine lit it!” said Lamplighter.

The moment there was something to do apart from the hard riding that the soldiers had grown so sick of during the last few days, they all livened up. Any goal was better than being left in a state of total uncertainty for days on end, not knowing where the enemy was and which foul creature you could feed a yard of steel to in order to improve your own foul mood. I could understand the men perfectly; for soldiers, inactivity is the worst possible torment.

“Harold, do you need a special invitation?” asked the goblin, riding up to me on Featherlight. “Where’s your chain mail?”

“What chain mail?”

“The chain mail we chose for you,” Kli-Kli responded irritably.

“I’m not going to cover myself in metal,” I said rudely.

“You really ought to,” said Marmot, who had already taken his chain mail off the packhorse and was putting it on over his shirt. “Armor, you know, can be quite wonderful for saving your life.”

“Ordinary chain mail won’t save you from a crossbow anyway. A sklot will shoot straight through it.”

“Not everybody has sklots, and the enemy doesn’t just use crossbows. It’ll stop you getting scratched, if nothing else.”

Rip me into a hundred pieces, but I have a prejudice against wearing metal on my body. I’ve been used to managing without armor all my life, and I feel no better in chain mail than some people do in the grave. Cramped and uncomfortable.

“Just look at all the others,” Kli-Kli persisted.

The warriors of the platoon were already dressed up in the armor that had so far been left on the packhorses because of the rather hot weather. But in my view an ordinary fire, even if it was rather big, didn’t merit such precautions.

The elves were sporting dark blue chain mail and steel breastplates with the emblems of their houses engraved on them. Miralissa had the Black Moon and Ell had the Black Rose. He put on the helmet that hid his face and Miralissa threw a chain-mail hood over her head, concealing her thick braid and fringe. Hallas, dressed up in something that looked more like fish scales, was helping Deler button up his steel leg plates. The dwarf set his hat aside and put a flat helmet on his head. It had protruding sections at the front to cover his cheeks and nose.

To avoid being the odd Doralissian out, I had to take my “packaging” out, too. It weighed down uncomfortably on my shoulders and I winced in a