"Sara Douglass - Redemption 2 - Pilgrim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

Nothing but the rays of the sun glinting from his feathers and the company of the sky.
Relieved, the eagle tilted his wings and headed for his roost under the eaves of one of the towers of Carlon.
He thought he would rest there a day or two. Watch. Discover if the evil would strike again, and, if so, how
best to survive it.
The yards of the slaughterhouse situated a half-league west of Tare were in chaos. Two of the slaughtermen
had been outside when Shed's mid-afternoon despair struck. Now they were dead, trampled beneath the
hooves of a thousand crazed livestock. The fourteen other men were still safe, for they had been inside and
protected when the TimeKeepers had burst through the Ancient Barrows.
Even though mid-afternoon had passed, and the world was once more left to its own devices, the men did
not dare leave the safety of the slaughterhouse.
Animals ringed the building. Sheep, a few pigs, seven old plough horses, and innumerable cattle тАФ all once
destined
for death and butchery. All staring implacably, unblinkingly, at the doors and windows.
One of the pigs nudged at the door with his snout, and then squealed.
Instantly pandemonium broke out. A horse screamed, and threw itself at the door. The wooden planks
cracked, but did not break.
Imitating the horse's lead, cattle hurled themselves against the door and walls.
The slaughtermen inside grabbed whatever they could to defend themselves.
The walls began to shake under the onslaught. Sheep bit savagely at any protuberance, pulling nails from
boards with their teeth, and horses rent at walls with their hooves. All the animals wailed, one continuous
thin screech that forced the men inside to drop their weapons and clasp hands to ears, screaming
themselves.
The door cracked once more, then split. A brown steer shouldered his way through. He was plump and
healthy, bred and fattened to feed the robust appetites of the Tarean citizens. Now he had an appetite
himself.
Behind him many score cattle trampled into the slaughterhouse, pigs and sheep squeezing among the legs
of their bovine cousins as best they could.
The invasion was many bodied, but it acted with one mind.
The slaughtermen did not die well.
The creatures used only their teeth to kill, not their hooves, and those teeth were grinders, not biters, and so
those men were ground into the grave, and it was not a fast nor pleasant descent.
Of all the creatures once destined for slaughter, only the horses did not enter the slaughterhouse and partake
of the meal.
They lingered outside in the first of the collecting yards, nervous, unsure, their heads high, their skin
twitching. One
6┬╗
snorted, then pranced about a few paces. He'd not had this much energy since he'd been a yearling.
A shadow flickered over one of the far fences, then raced across the trampled dirt towards the group of
horses. They bunched together, turning to watch the shadow, and then it swept over them and the horses
screamed, jerked, and then stampeded, breaking through the fence in their panic.
High above, the flock of Hawkchilds veered to the east and turned their eyes once more to the Ancient
Barrows.
Their masters called.
The horses fled, running east with all the strength left in their hearts.
At the slaughterhouse, a brown and cream badger ambled into the bloodied building and stood surveying
the carnage.
You have done well, he spoke to those inside. Would you like to exact yet more vengeance?
Sheol tipped back her head and exposed her slim white throat to the afternoon sun. Her fingers spasmed
and dug into the rocky soil of the ruined Barrow she sat on, her body arched, and she moaned and
shuddered.