"Brackett, Leigh - Skaith 2 - Hounds Of Skaith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brackett Leigh)

The Earthmen rode out of the camp with the hounds behind them.
They rode for some distance. The camp was lost behind them in the dunes.
Stark's muscles relaxed as the adrenaline stopped flowing. Sweat broke out on him, clammy beneath his furs. Ashton's face was a study in hard-drawn lines. Neither man spoke. Then at last Ashton sighed and shook his head and said softly, "Christ! I thought surely they'd try to turn the brutes against us."
"They were afraid to,'" Stark said. "But there will be another time."
The hounds trotted peacefully.
"It seems such a primitive idea," Ashton said, "setting them to guard the Citadel."
"That's what they wanted. The Lords Protector had men-at-arms in plenty to defend them during the Wandering, but men will face other men and weapons they can see. The great white hounds appearing suddenly out of the snowЧwraiths with demon eyes and a supernatural power to killЧwas something most men preferred to avoid, and of course the ones who didn't, died. In time the legend became even more effective than the fact."
"The Lords Protector must have killed many people who only wanted help."
"The Lords Protector have always been realists. The important thing was that the Citadel should remain sacrosanct, a mystery and a power hidden from men. A few lives had to be sacrificed for the good of the many." Stark's face hardened. "You weren't at Irnan, Simon, tied to a post, waiting to be flayed alive by the will of Mordach, the Chief Wandsman. You didn't hear the mob howl, you didn't smell the blood when Yarrod was slaughtered and torn."
Gerrith did. Gerrith was there, stripped naked but not shamed before the mob, defying Mordach, calling out to the people of Irnan in the clear strong voice of prophecy. Irnan is finished here on Skaith, you must build a new city, on a new world, out among the stars. She had waited there for death, beside him. As had Halk, and those three who had died at Thyra trying to reach the Citadel.
Ashton had his own bitter memories of captivity and threatened death. He was only alive himself because the Lords Protector had not quite dared to be deprived of his knowledge of this new and unknown foe they had to deal withЧthe vast Outside.
"I know how they think," he said. "But they're not being realists about the future. The viable surface of this planet gets smaller every year. The marginal peoples are already beginning to move as the cold drives them and the food supplies dwindle. The Lords Protector are perfectly aware of this. If they don't act in time, they'll have another slaughter on their hands, such as they had at the time of the Wandering."
"It was the slaughter that gave them their power," Stark said. "They can accept another one as long as they retain their power which they will never give up."
"We're asking them to do more than give up power. We're asking them to cease being. Where does a Lord Protector go when he has nothing left to protect? They have meaning only in the existing context of Skaith. If we take away that context, they disappear."
"That," said Stark, "is the best fate I could ask for them."
He picked up the reins. The road markers marched away in the morning. Gelmar was somewhere ahead.
With Gerrith.
The men made much better time now, changing mounts frequently. The pack load was shared between two led animals. The beasts were by no means fresh, but they were stronger than the ones that had been left behind. Stark pushed them without mercy.
Gelmar was pushing, too. Three times they came upon dead animals. Stark half-expected to find Halk's body left by the wayside. The man had taken a great wound at Thyra, and this pace would no doubt finish him.
"Perhaps Halk is dead," Ashton suggested, "and they're carrying the corpse. They can display him just as well, pickled in wine and honey."
The wind blew fitfully, veering with a kind of spiteful malice so that it could kick sand in their faces no matter how they turned them. Toward noon a haze came out of the north and spread across the sky. Old Sun sickened, and the face of the desert was troubled.
Ashton said, "The Runners often come with the sandstorms. In force."
They drove their mounts to the limit and beyond, passing each marker as an individual triumph. The beasts groaned as they went. The hounds ran with their jaws wide and their tongues lolling.
The haze thickened. The light of the ginger star yellowed and darkened. The wind struck at the men with vicious little cat's-paws. Sky, sun and desert lost definition, became merged into one strange brassy twilight
In that distanceless and horizonless half-gloom Stark and Ashton came to the top of a ridge and saw Gelmar's party ahead, a line of dark figures clotted together, puffs of blowing sand rising beneath them as they moved.
6
Stark said to Gerd, Run. Send fear to the servants if they fight. Hold them all until I come.
Gerd called his pack together. They fled away, nine pale shadows. They bayed, and the terrible voices rang down the wind. The people of Gelmar's party heard and faltered in their going.
Stark handed his lead-reins to Ashton and flogged his beast into a lumbering gallop.
A spume of sand had begun to blow from the tops of the dunes. The wind was settling into the northeast quandrant. Stark lost the voices of the hounds. For a time he lost sight of the party, because of a dusty thickness in the lower air that came down like a curtain on the flat below the ridge. When he saw them again, blurred shapes of men and animals rubbed with a dark thumb on an ocher canvas, they were standing perfectly still. Only the hounds moved, circling.
Stark rode up to the group. The face he was looking for was not the first one he saw. That was Gelmar's. The Chief Wandsman of Skeg sat his mount a little apart from the others, as though perhaps he had turned to intercept the hounds. The strain of the journey showed on him and on the three other Wandsmen who accompanied him. Stark knew them all by sight but only one by nameЧthat was Vasth, who had wrapped his ruined face in a scarf against the cold. Halk had struck him down at Irnan, on that day when the city rose and killed its Wandsmen. Vasth was apparently the only survivor. His remaining eye peered at Stark, a vicious glitter between the wrappings.
Gelmar had changed considerably since Stark first met him, tall and lordly in his red robe, secure in his unquestioned authority, ordering the mob at Skeg. The Wandsman had taken his initial shock that night, when Stark laid violent hands on his sacred person and made it clear to him that he could die as easily as any other man. He had received further shocks, all connected with Stark. Now he looked at the Earthman, not as would a superior being with power unlimited, but as a tired man, one who was exasperated, thwarted and quite humanly angryЧseeing another defeat, but not beaten. Gelmar was not ever going to be beaten as long as he could breathe.
Gerd ranged himself at Stark's side. Wandsmen angry we follow N'Chaka.
Angry with N'Chaka. Not you.
Gerd whined. Never angry at Flay.
Flay is dead. Ferdias say follow me, for now.
Gerd subsided, unsatisfied.
Gelmar smiled briefly, having understood Gerd's side of the exchange. "You'll have difficulty holding them. They're not equipped to serve two masters."
"Would you care to put it to the test now?"
Gelmar shook his head. "No more than Ferdias did."
The Yur, ten or eleven of them scattered along the line, were standing quiet. Some were on foot, and they seemed less tired than the mounted Wandsmen. But they were bred for strength. They stared at the hounds with their blank bright eyes, and Stark thought they were puzzled rather than afraid. They knew what had happened at the Citadel, but they hadn't seen it. They were armed with bows and light lances, swords and daggers at their belts.
"The servants," Stark said, "will lay down their arms, very carefully. If any hostile move is made, the hounds will kill."
"Would you leave us at the mercy of the Runners?" cried one of the lesser Wandsmen.
"That concerns me not at all," said Stark. "You have a dagger at your own waist. Discard it." He motioned to Gelmar. "Give the order."
"The hounds will not harm us," said Vasth. His voice came muffled through the scarf.
Gelmar said with cold impatience. "There is a sandstorm blowing. We need the Yur." To Stark he said, "The Runners come with the storms, living where other creatures would die. They come in strength, devouring everything in their path."
"So I have heard," said Stark. "Give the order."
Gelmar gave the order. The Yur dropped their weapons into the blowing sand. Gelmar loosened his own belt.
Stark kept his eyes on Vasth.
Gerd said, Wandsman throw knife, kill N'Chaka.