Ell, brushing aside a lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes. “About fifty yards back.”
Everyone heaved a sigh of relief, realizing that the halt they had been anticipating for so long would soon arrive. I myself was barely able to stay in the saddle and my dearest wish was to get down from Little Bee.
“That’s it! There they are, the darlings!” Honeycomb exclaimed when the silhouettes of two aspens emerged from the darkness, looming up in isolation above the bushes. “The track starts right between them.”
“Right then, a halt.” Hallas climbed gratefully out of his saddle and I followed his example. “Uncle! Are we going to eat anything today or do we bed down on an empty stomach?”
“You never think of anything but filling your belly, longbeard.” Deler laughed.
Do I need to tell you what the gnome said to that? Everything had come full circle.
“Someone promised to tell us a story,” said Arnkh some time later, when we were all sitting round the campfire with hare stew in our bellies.
“If you wish,” said Kli-Kli, setting aside his bundle of knotted strings. “What would you like to hear?”
“You mean you know a lot of stories?”
“I am the king’s jester, after all,” the goblin said, offended. “I have to know them for my job.”
“You promised to tell us about Hargan’s Wasteland, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Ah-ah . . . ,” Kli-Kli drawled. “Have none of you ever heard about Hargan’s Brigade?”
Some shook their heads, some shrugged indifferently. The name didn’t mean anything to anyone.
“You people have such short memories.” The goblin sighed. “You know, it all happened only a little less than five hundred years ago.”
“Come off it,” Loudmouth laughed. “That’s time enough to forget anything at all.”
“But not the Dog Swallows Brigade to which Avendoom probably owes its very survival to this day.”
“Dog Swallows?” Uncle echoed with a frown. “I don’t recall any such unit. At least, it doesn’t exist in Valiostr . . .”
“It doesn’t now, and it never will again,” Kli-Kli said in a sad voice. “It all happened during the Spring War. The orcs came pouring out of the Forests of Zagraba in an endless flood, taking everyone by surprise. Tens of thousands of them descended on the Border Kingdom, but the main thrust of the blow was directed at Valiostr—”
“You don’t need to tell us that,” said Arnkh, interrupting the goblin.
“Who’s telling this story, you or me?” Kli-Kli asked furiously. “If you’re so smart, you do the talking, and I’ll go to bed! But if you can’t, keep quiet!”
Arnkh raised both hands in a gesture of submission.
“Grok set his army on the march and gave battle on the banks of the Iselina. For six days the Firstborn tried to force the river, but the men held firm. On the seventh day, at the cost of enormous losses, the orcs broke through Grok’s defenses in four places and threw back the army of men, forcing it to retreat to the north. The whole of south Valiostr was lost. There was no news from Shamar, and Grok thought that the Borderland had already been annihilated.”
“Ha! The Borderland doesn’t surrender that easily! We withstood that siege!” said Arnkh, but fell silent when he caught Kli-Kli’s eye.
“Isilia, as usual, did not get involved in the war, hoping that the cup of woe would pass it by. It was pointless to ask for help from Miranueh—your state had never lived at peace with that country. It made absolutely no sense to say anything to the dark elves after the Long Winter came, following the grotesque death of their prince; none of them had even been seen in Valiostr for many years. . . . The kingdom was left to face the enemy alone. Only destiny and the army, gentlemen, could halt the flood of orcs.”
“The Firstborn had never attacked in such numbers before. That was a terrible time,” Uncle said with a nod.
“The humans despised the other races too much. How could they accept half animals as their allies? And then this happened. No one had anticipated the coming of the orcs, and they paid a heavy price for their lack of vigilance. After a long retreat, the weary army engaged the Firstborn under the walls of Ranneng and lost the battle. The capital was taken and then destroyed. The army and the king retreated to the north. The exhausted men, constantly harassed by the advance units of the enemy, fell back toward Avendoom in order to fight its final battle