"Denning, Troy - Forgotten Realms - Darkwell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denning Troy)

But there was not a moving sahuagin to be seen. Captain Dansforth stood with a knot of his sailors amidships, while Daryth, Pawldo, and Robyn were near Tristan on the fore-deck. Tristan's great moorhound, Canthus, stood beside the druid. The dog's back was higher than her waist, and its shaggy brown muzzle was stained with sahuagin blood. More than once this day, he had saved the Jives of his master and mistress.
"They still fight," said Robyn, pointing at the longship, where the battle still raged.
Tristan smiled grimly at the sight. He could see the north-man chief, Grunnarch the Red, poised before the mast of his graceful ship. His men stood with him in a circle, facing outward, while twice their number of sahuagin slashed toward the kill.
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"Make sail!" cried Captain Dansforth, sending his men to line and beam. He nodded at the king. "We can make a break for it before they finish 'em off!"
The Defiant had placed her port side to the wind as she drifted during the melee. In another second, the sail came taut, and the Defiant heeled sharply into the wind. As her nose passed the drifting longship, Tristan saw another northmen dragged into the mass of sahuagin.
"Come alongside!" he called, noting the shock in Dans-forth's eyes. "Tb the rescue!"
"You'reЧ"
The captain was about to call him mad, Tristan realized. The thought startled him, and he realized that his order must seem mad by most logical arguments. Why should they help the raiders who had, minutes earlier, been bent on their own destruction?
"Hurry! And send your bowmen forward, man!"
Dansforth only hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he curtly gestured to four of his men who held heavy crossbows. "\fau heard the king! Move!"
The Defiant crashed against the waves again, slicing a path that would take her just past the longship. The distance closed rapidly while the bowmen knelt at the rail and took aim.
"Oh, good!" Tristan was startled by the shrill voice behind him. "C'mon, YazЧwe didn't miss the whole battle!"
"I'm scaredЧscared! W-W-We better get below!" answered another, equally shrill voice.
The bright orange shape of a tiny dragon, its butterfly wings fluttering excitedly, suddenly appeared beside the king, popping from invisibility as faerie dragons are fond of doing. The little serpent darted past the king to perch on the rail. "Oh, boy! Northmen! C'mon, let's get 'em!"
"N-Newt, don't! Stay back here with meЧwith me!" Without turning around, Tristan pictured the tiny sprite, Yazilli-click, cautiously peering from the hatch to the hold, his antennae no doubt quivering anxiously. The two faerie creatures had spent most of the voyage belowdecks, but now the chaos of the battle had aroused them.
DAHKWELL
"Newt, why don't you keep watch on the waters off the stern?" suggested the king. "See that they don't sneak up on us from behind!" And incidentally, he added silently, stay out of the way.
"Well, okay," the faerie dragon agreed, with a suspicious look at Tristan.
Quickly Newt buzzed away, and Yaz popped out of the hatch to follow him. The sprite was a small, humanlike creature, about two feet tall and distinguished by a small pair of gossamer wings and two antennae that sprouted from his forehead.
The young king turned his attention back to the battle, to see that the longship was very close now. He could clearly make out several northmen in desperate combat with the monsters, while other sahuagin held back from the fight.
"Shoot those farthest from the humans," said Tristan. "Now!"
The four bolts flew through the air, each finding a target in the mass of scaly bodies. The red-haired northman in the center of the deck cried out a challenge, and his crewmen pressed the attack. The crossbowmen reloaded quickly, and loosed a second volley as the Defiant started to turn, barely a hundred feet from the raider now.
These bolts, too, found home in the slick bodies of the fish-men. The spined heads of the sahuagin bristled as they turned to face the Defiant, hissing their rage and clashing their weapons.
Daryth and Robyn joined Tristan at the gunwale. The king climbed up on the rail, bracing himself with a hanging rope. The Sword of Cymrych Hugh was like a feather in his handЧa thirsty, violent feather. He saw perhaps two dozen northmen still standing, though the numbers of the sahuagin had thinned as well. And the red-bearded captain still led his men boldly, striking to both sides with his broad-bladed axe.
The two ships drifted closer as Dansforth smoothly maneuvered his vessel through a sharp turn. Then the Defiant paused, parallel to the longship and barely twenty feet away.
DOUGLAS NILES
DARK WELL
The rolling of the swell dropped the longship into a trough. Tristan looked down into the hull and saw a pile of bodies, white skin and green scales intermingled in death. At the same instant, he pushed away from the gunwale, swinging on the rope until he lost momentum. He hung poised over the longship for a moment, and then let go to land lightly among the bodies. He heard Daryth land easily behind him.
On the deck of the Defiant, Robyn chanted a prayer to her goddess, then waved her staff in the direction of the sahuagin. Suddenly the outline of fish-men bodies glowed white, outlined in cool, magical fire. The reptiles hissed their rage, though several cowered back in fear. They slapped and struck at the flames without success, though the fire did not appear to cause them harm.
The red-bearded northman bellowed a challenge of brute violence, cleaving a sahuagin to the waist with his axe. His comrades let loose a shout and attacked.
A great, green sahuagin lunged at the High King. Its toothy jaws gaped, and the spiny ridge along its backbone stood erect as sharp claws clutched at Tristan's throat. The white fire flickered and flared around the creature's ghastly shape, making a clear target. The vicious claws swept toward the king, but the silver sword found the throat of the monster first. Pink blood sprayed Tristan as the reptilian attacker clutched the lethal wound, still staggering toward him as it died.
The High King whirled toward the other sahuagin, the Sword of Cymrych Hugh marking a gleaming arc through the air before him. The northman leader crushed a green skull with his massive axe, and suddenly the fish-men lost their heart for battle. In one motion, still outlined in eerie flame, the remaining attackers slipped over the side of the longship and disappeared beneath the waves.
Tristan and Daryth stood poised for combat, watching the northmen. They saw tall, proud seafarers. The one called Grunnarch stepped forward. His red hair and beard flowed freely across his chest and shoulders, and his pale blue eyes stared warily back at the pair. His chest was broad, and
strapping muscles rippled beneath the skin of his arms. The northman wore only a short wool tunic, of plain gray, and high-!aced leather sandals. He looked every inch the sailor, taking no note of the rolling deck beneath his feet as he advanced, studying his rescuers.
Grunnarch the Red saw two men facing him, one fair and one swarthy. The fair one stood easily before him, holding that dazzling sword. He held himself proudly, like a ruler of men. His brown beard and hair were shorter than the northman's, but still long and full, as a man's should be. Though leaner of muscle, the swordsman had a wiry, solid frame that appeared to conceal hidden reserves of strength.
The other man, the swarthier of the pair, was cleanshaven. His skin was a rich brown, his hair as black as night. He carried a silver scimitar and stood balanced, catlike, upon the balls of his feet. Grunnarch noticed that, while the swordsman stared him full in the face, the man with the scimitar looked everywhere else, as if watching for a threat to his liege.
Then Grunnarch's eyes went to the ship, where a black-haired woman stood at the rail. She met his gaze boldly, with none of the shyness that would have characterized a woman of the North. For several moments, he stared, distracted by her beauty, until he remembered his surroundings.
The northman lowered his axe. He spoke in heavily accented Commonspeech.
"Greetings. I am Grunnarch the Red, King of Norland. 1 thank you for my life."
"I am Tristan Kendrick, High King of the Ffolk."
The longship lurched slightly as Dansforth's crew brought the two ships together, lashing the hulls side by side. Robyn sprang into the longship to stand beside the two men. Grunnarch turned and spoke a command in his own tongue, and the surviving members of his crew began to tend to their wounded and hurl sahuagin bodies overboard.
Grunnarch's eyes turned unconsciously to the woman again. He saw the supple curves of her body, poorly concealed by her loose cloak. She stood easily in the rocking
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hull, moving like a fighter, with balance and grace. He saw that the muscles of her arms and neck were tight, but her strength could not conceal the womanliness of her appearance.
And then he recognized her. He recalled a figure, high atop a tower of Caer Corwell, black hair streaming in the wind. He saw her with her staff held over her head, and he remembered the lightning that had crashed and crackled into the ranks of his men. With the memory came the stench of burned, blackened flesh, and even the feeling of hopeless panic that had arisen within him. It was at that moment, Grunnarch remembered, that he had realized that the northmen's campaign was doomed.
He shook his head suddenly, turning back to the young king who stood looking at him curiously, and he wondered at the oddity that brought the two of them, sworn enemies a year ago, standing face to face over the dead sahuagin.