Gieve, half asleep from exhaustion for the long sleepless night, woke up with a start in feeling the horse slip under him.
The minstrel barely had time to throw away the dying torch, free the leg from the stirrup and jump off to the side, before ending up with the animal, along the steep edge of the crumbling muletrack. A strip of pebbles and earth, barely visible in the pale glow of the gray dawn, which hardly made its way through the dark, heavy clouds of a leaden sky.
Isfan, in front of him, wrapped in his cloak to protect himself from the intense cold of the night, turned to look at him with frowning eyelashes, without stopping. Farangis, leading the meager company, pulled straight as he had not noticed anything.
"Go ahead, do not worry about me, I'm fine" shouted Gieve, in a cheerfully ironic tone, busy tugging her steed out of the reins, trying to bring him back to the path where, left on the ground, the torch was turning off in a cloud of acrid black smoke.
The animal whinnied and rose on its hind legs, kicking stones and dust in the air. Grabbed by the bite, Gieve managed to pull him down and make him regain solid ground.
Isfan shrugged and looked again in front of him, but now he drove his horse more cautiously, stumbling over the shaky stones. To better illuminate the dangerous edge of the path, he lowered his torch, which flame was now languishing about to turn off, after having burnt for the whole endless night of walking.
"My enchanting Farangis" called Gieve, bringing his animal tired and still frightened by the bridle, "I will have to compose a song to celebrate our last adventure. Going along the wild paths of the Khojir gorge is already a daring challenge during the day, but doing it at night ... well, it's a heroic undertaking!"
The priestess gave no sign of having heard. Straight on saddle, her gaze drawn forward, as if concentrated on something that only she could see in the mist, beyond the pale circle of light projected from his agonizing torch, Farangis listened attentively to the feeble voice of his Djinn.
Looking at her, Gieve caressed the quivering face of his horse. He felt the sweat of the beast dampen his hand and the breath, struck by fatigue, of the animal reached his ears in a gasp.
"Courage, my friend," he whispered. "We are all tired, but we still can not stop. At least so decided our guide." He sighed blatantly and raised his voice. "Anyway, I hope she will change soon her mind, because we are
so exhausted, all of us, that we risk to frustrate our heroic undertaking tonight, ending fatigue deaths!
He sighed even louder and went on plaintively. "How sad, to die here, among these bare and sharp rocks. The crows will catch our eyes and the jackals will gnaw at our bones, but, worse than anything, no one will hear my artistic composition."
"This could be the only positive aspect, instead" Isfan snapped, nervous.
Gieve was about to reply when Farangis turned. "Endure," said the priestess, uncovering her face from the edge of her white cloak, pulled over her head. "We have to move fast now, as long as we are on the rocky ground. Here the necromancers moving through the earth are not able to use their magic: the stone is an obstacle they can not cross. Later on, however, we will have to use more caution. Although the enemy's eyes are aimed at our army moving towards Peshawar, it is not excluded that its spies may notice us."
Without waiting for an answer to her words, Farangis dismounted and turned off the last fire tongues of the torch into the dust. "We do not need the fire anymore," she said. "Turn off your torch, Isfan and dismount you too. We proceed on foot, to give the horses some breath."
The young man promptly obeyed. As soon as he got out of the saddle, he thrust the steaming tip of his torch into the stony ground and turned it into the dust, until it died out in a last puff of black smoke.
"Venerable Farangis, who is the enemy you speak of?" Isfan asked, "From your tone do you seem not to refer to some clan of foreign marauders, and who are these necromancers? You know them, don't you?"
"Oh, we know them all right!" answered Gieve, who had reached him while remaining forced behind by the path too narrow, to allow the passage to two horses side by side."We have already seen them at work, long ago, but we did not think they would be made alive again, now that the Holy Sword Rucknabad is in Arslan 's hands."
Isfan gave him a questioning look. "The Rucknabad Sword? What does that old relic have to do with these necromancers?"
With a theatrical gesture, Gieve raised his eyes to the sky now more clearer in the morning, though still heavy with dark and threatening clouds. " What ignorance!" he exclaimed. "Will I have to sing for this young goat the ancient poem of his ancestors ?!"
"Not now, Gieve!" Farangis interjected in a stern tone, preventing Isfan, who had already opened his mouth to reply to the teasing words of the minstrel.
"In fact, do not talk about this," the priestess warned. "Words can be dangerous, the names lethal. Avoid attracting attention to us, even only by evoking things that should not be named."
Gieve smiled at Isfan's obvious concern. The young man, dumbfounded, was now looking around with the guarded making of a wild animal that has sensed an invisible danger.
"You are right, as always, my enchanting Faragis" the minstrel spoke again. He frowned and his eyes became dark. "Just tell me one thing: are you really convinced that Daryun is still alive? I would be sorry to have to end my composition with his eulogy."
Farangis raised a hand to caress the sweaty neck of his white mare. "I have faith we will find him, Gieve" she replied, then turned to the minstrel and a light burned in her eyes, "and I do not despair he lives. You know well that this is not the first time General Daryun faces a demon."
Gieve's smile became gloomy, while the minstrel bent his head, while Isfan turned his gaze perplexed from one to another, without understanding what the two were referring to.
"Do you mean that noble Daryun has already fought against these necromancers?" asked the young man.
"Yeah, and not just him," Gieve answered, smiling now slyly at the boy's surprised expression. "I know that in our nice excursion on the Demavant of a few years ago, to solve a problem we have created another... maybe worse."
"You, on the Demavant?!" Isfan exclaimed in amazement.
"Why are you amazed? Did you think Arslan had found Rucknabad in his backyard?" said Gieve, more ironic than ever.
Isfan blushed, but Farangis's voice cut off his protest in his throat.
"Silence!" ordered the priestess. "You do not have to ... " the phrase was broken by the dark rumble that suddenly vibrated in the air, like a roll of boulders in the bowels of the mountain. A shivering tremor, ran through the earth. Rubble and dust rolled from the ridges on the path.
The horses neighed and discarded, frightened. Rolling eyes in their sockets, the three animals began to paw and snort, biting the brake.
Isfan pursed his lips, uncovering his teeth like a wolf, pulling his bridle hard to keep his horse from running away. "What happens ?!" exclaimed and his voice was lost in the deafening silence that enveloped everything.
A flock of birds arose from a dry scrub bush in a whirring of wings to which suddendly echoed a frightful roar that seemed to come from the very heart of the mountain.
The earth winced as if prey to violent convulsions, which detached rocks from the ridges in a precipice of boulders and crushed stone, in an avalanche of stone. The three on the path grabbed their beasts and sought shelter, however precarious, by throwing themselves against the side of the wall above them.
Crawling against the stone wall, which seemed to wriggle like a living thing, in the spasm of the earthquake, Farangis, Gieve and Isfan tried to reach a cramped hollow in the mountain, not far from them. The terrified horses were struggling, threatening to escape at every instant, and they seemed to dance a strange dance of death on the jolting path, where the pebbles wobbled like spirits in a cloud of suffocating dust.
A sharp crash overwhelmed for a moment the frightful roar that stunned men and beasts. Gieve barely had time to look up and see the avalanche of rock come off the wall and fall on them.
The minstrel left the reins of his horse and jumped forward with a cry of alarm. He grabbed Farangis by waist and Isfan by the neck, dragging them in a spasmodic race towards the miserable shelter, now a few steps away. The horses escaped to opposite side and disappeared in the landslide of rocks and earth that hit the path in a shapeless mass.
The earth winced and twisted for a long time, before settling down with a final violent convulsion, then all was only silent and clouds of dust.