"Sara Douglass - Redemption 3 - Crusader" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

Eight days later the spaceships blasted out of the earth's atmosphere, their crews hopeful that at
least they were giving their fellows back home a chance.
What they didn't realise was that when they'd blasted out of their underground bunkers, they'd left a
corridor of dust and rock down which the maniacally hungry were already swarming.
Fischer didn't have time to die of cancer, after all.

Chapter 1
TheWasteland
 No longer did the ancient speckled blue eagle soar through the bright skies of Tencendor. Now
Hawkchilds had inhabited the seething, scalding thermals that rose above a devastated wasteland. They
rode high into the broiling, sterile skies seeking that which would help their master.
The Enemy Reborn has hidden himself. Find his hiding place, find his bolthole.
Find him for me!
Qeteb had been tricked. The StarSon had not died in the Maze at all. The Hunt had been a
farce. Somewhere the true StarSon was hiding, laughing at him.
Find him! Find him!
And when the Hawkchilds found him, Qeteb did not want to go through the bother of another hunt
through the Maze. All he wanted to do was to reach out with his mailed fists and choke the living breath
out of the damned, damned Enemy Reborn's body!
The fact that he had been tricked was almost as bad as the realisation that Qeteb's plans for total
domination of this world could not be realised until the Enemy had been defeated once and for all.
All Qeteb wanted to do was ravage, but what he had to do was stamp the Enemy into oblivion,
obliteration and whatever other non-existent future Qeteb could think of as fast and as completely as he
possibly could.
Find him! Find him!
And so the Hawkchilds soared, and while they did not find the Enemy Reborn's bolthole on their
first pass over the wasteland, they did find many interesting things.
It helped immeasurably that all external inessentials, like forests and foliage and homes and lives, had
been blasted from the surface of the wasteland, for that meant secret things lay open to curious eyes.
Secret things that had been forgotten for many years, things that should have been remembered and
seen to before the Enemy Reborn had hidden himself in his bolthole.
"Silly boy. Silly boy," whispered the Hawkchilds as they soared and drifted. "We remember you
wandering listless and hopeless in the worlds before the final leap into Tencendor. Now your
forgetfulness will crucify you ..."
And so they whispered and giggled and drifted and made good note of all they saw.

Far to the south a lone Hawkchild spied something sitting in the dust that had once been a rippling ocean
of forest.
It was but a speck that the circling Hawkchild spotted from the corner of his eye, but the speck was
somehow ... interesting.
The hands at the tips of his leathery wings flexed, then grasped into tight claws, and the
Hawkchild slid through the air towards the ash-covered ground.
He stood there a long while, his head cocked curiously to one side, his bright eyes slowly blinking
and regarding the object.
It was plain, arid obviously completely useless, but there was something of power about it and the
Hawkchild knew it should be further investigated.
The bird-like creature stalked the few paces between himself and the object, paused, then carefully
turned it over with one of his taloned feet.
The object flipped over and hit the ground with a dull thud, sending a fine cloud of wood ash drifting
away in the bitter, northerly breeze.