"Cook, Glen - Dread Empire 01 - Shadow Of All Night Falling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

"Will we retake the city?"

"No..." A thoughtful gleam entered Turran's eye. "Nepanthe's retreating north with three hundred loyal Iwa Skolovdans. I'll bet the bandits are ahead of her. And we're here...Tell Redbeard to get ready for a forced march."

Chuckling, Valther went after Grimnason.

However, the jaws of the mercenary's trap snapped shut only on bandit rabble. Somehow sensing his peril, bin Yousif abandoned his savage allies and vanished.


SIX: At the Heart of the Mountains of Fear

Tall, cold, lonely was Ravenkrak, a vast, brooding fortress built of gray stone set without mortar. It had twelve tall towers, some square, some round, and crenellated battlements like massive lower jaws. Ice rimmed the walls in patchlets of white. Classless windows seemed empty eye sockets when seen from the outer slope. A huge tunnel of an entrance, with portcullis down - like fangs-put the finishing touch on the castle's appearance of a skull.

Cold and drafty the place appeared. Cold and drafty it was.

Nepanthe stood in the parapet of her Bell Tower, braving an arctic wind. Shivering, she took in forbidding visions of bald rock and fields of snow. Yes, the fortress seemed invincible, though she was certainly no expert. It was built triangular on a pointed upthrust. Only one wall, the tallest, could be reached by an enemy. The others blended into the sheer flanking cliffs of the upthrust. But she wasn't happy as she studied Ravenkrak's strength. She thought it was all for nothing, that the enemy they faced couldn't possibly be stopped by weapons and walls. The great dooms brushed defenses aside as a man did spiders' webs while walking through a forest; with scant cognizance, with but an instant's irritation.

The wind's moaning rose to a howl. It slid claws of ice through her garments.

From an open hatchway, a heavy, robed figure climbed into the wind: Saltimbanco. Glancing at him, Nepanthe whispered sadly, "I wish it were over."

The clown was in a rare good humor. "Ah, fair Princess!" he cried (he and her loyal Iwa Skolovdans insisted on the title), "Behold! Steel and silver-encladded knight comes across dangers of half world, scales mighty mountain, impregnates impregnable fortress, comes in knick to rescue fair maiden. 'But what's this?' cries stout knight-in guise of own stout self-'Where hides the bloody dragon?' Self, being warrior of mighty thews, shall smite him hip and thigh, thus... and thus ... riposte... left to jaw... got 'im!"

Despite her abysmal mood, Nepanthe laughed at his antics, especially the improbable "left to jaw." Laugh she did, then, realizing that the dragon he meant was her mood, laughed a little louder, forcedly. She remembered a time when she couldn't laugh at all, and anticipated such a time for the future. The near future.

"Alas and alack, Sir Knight," she moaned in feigned despair (which nudged the borders of becoming real)," 'tis no dragon which holds me in thralldom bound, but ogres and trolls in number six cavorting through the castle below."

"Hai! Tusse-folk, say you? Woe!" Saltimbanco lamented. "Self, very much fear, maybe so, same left troll sword behind."

"And that's no way to talk about your brothers," said a third voice, good-naturedly.

Saltimbanco and Nepanthe peered at Valther, each with his or her suspicions, each wondering what machinations were behind his appearance. However, Valther was nothing more than he pretended-for the moment.

Seeing her first statement tolerated, Nepanthe spat, "No way to talk about my brothers? You, with the minds of weasels and hearts of vultures? If not ogres and trolls, pray tell what?"

"Careful, Nepanthe. In anger secrets all winged fly. And you're treading close to the drawn line, talking that way." He glanced downward, reminding her of the Deep Dungeons, then changed the subject. "But I didn't come up to argue. Just to view our frigid domain with my baby sister."

All three stared out over the stark, glacier-cleft mountains. The grasping talons of winter never completely released Ravenkrak, merely lightened their grip in summer's season.

"You seem poetically inclined today," Nepanthe observed.

Valther shrugged, pointed outward. "Isn't that a subject fit for a poem?"

"Yes. An ode to a Wind God, or Father Winter. Or maybe an epic concerning the odyssey of a glacier. Certainly nothing human or warm."

"Uhm, truth told," Saltimbanco muttered. Then, assuming Valther wanted to talk to Nepanthe privately, he headed for the hatchway.

"Hold on! Saltimbanco, you don't have to leave." Valther pretended horror at the notion. "There'll be no secrets discussed here. And Nepanthe's mood would fail if you left. If there was ever an elixir of the heart, a potation to buoy the spirit, then it'd be found in you. Proof? Nepanthe. Fair Nepanthe, sweet Nepanthe, once lost in her vapors, a stick of wood for all the heart she showed. And who's to blame for the changes? Even Turran's remarked on in. Tis yourself, Knight Ponderous."

Nepanthe stared at Valther, amazed.