"Kerr, Katharine - Deverry 03 - Bristling Wood v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

to have gone mad, hunting in big packs and attacking travelers
along the road. The sages agreed that the wolves must have been
desperate and starving, and this coupled with the weather meant
famine in the mountains, perhaps even some sort of blight or
plague that might move south. In council the Seven Kings made
plans: a fair method of stockpiling food and distributing it to those
in need, a small military levy to deal with the wolf packs. They also
gathered dweomerfolk and sages around them to combat the
threats and to lend their lore to farmers in need. In the sixth spring,
squadrons of royal archers went forth to guard the north, but they
thought they were only hunting wolves.

When the attack came, it broke like an avalanche and buried the
archers in corpses. No one truly knew who the enemies were; they
were neither human nor elvish, but a squat breed like enormous
dwarves, dressed in skins, and armed only with crude spears and
axes. For all their poor weapons, their warriors fought with such
enraged ferocity that they seemed not to care whether they lived or
died. There were also thousands of them, and they traveled
mounted. When the sages rushed north with the first
reinforcements, they reported that the language of the Hordes was
utterly unknown to them. Half-starved, desperately fleeing some
catastrophe in their homeland, they burned and ravaged and looted
as they came. Since the People had never seen horses before,
the attackers had a real advantage, first of surprise, then of mobility
once the elves grew used to the horrifying beasts. By the time that
they realized that horses were even more vulnerable to arrows than
men, the north was lost, and Tanbalapalim a heap of smoking
timbers and cracked stone.

The kings rallied the People and led them to war. After every man
and woman who could loose a bow marched north, for a time the
battles held even. Although the corpse fires burned day and night
along the roads, still the invaders marched in under the smoke.
Since he pitied their desperation, King Elamanderiel Sun-Sworn
tried to parley with the leaders and offered them the eastern
grasslands for their own. In answer, they slew his honor guard and
ran his head onto a long spear, which they paraded in front of their
men for days. After that, no mercy was offered. Children marched
north with bows to take the places of their fallen parents, yet still
the Hordes came.

By autumn the middle provinces were swept away in a tide of
blood. Although many of the People fell back in a last desperate
attempt to hold Rinbaladelan on the coast, most fled, taking their
livestock, rounding up the horses that had given the invaders such
an edge, loading wagons and trekking east to the grasslands that
the Hordes despised. Rinbaladelan fought out the winter, then fell
in the spring. More refugees came east, carrying tales the more
horrible because so common. Every clan had had its women