"Dave Duncan - A Handful Of Men 2 - Upland Outlaws" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

She paused, listening to the darkness. "The other one won't come tonight, Ghosts. Too snowy tonight." She felt resignation for an answer, overlying
the triumph. Reassured, chortling to herself, she turned and hobbled away, back to her own nook in the basement.


Casements rattled, and the wind moaned.




ONE
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 Upland Outlaws




Burning deck

1

Winter and grief lay heavy as conquerors' boots on the great city. No lights showed in the deserted streets as the solitary coach rumbled slowly
through the ever-deepening snow.


The continuous tolling of the temple bells was a jarring torment. For fifty-one years Emshandar IV had ruled the Impire. His passing had left a
gaping wound in the lives of his subjects, a sorrow that only the imps themselves could comprehend.


The unseasonable snowstorm added to the misery of the bitter night. The wheels and the horses' hooves sounded strangely muffled. The carriage
was traveling unaccompanied, although Ionfeu, being both a count and a proconsul, would normally rank an escort of Praetorian Hussars within the
capital. But tonight secrecy was more important than protection against footpads and sorcery a much greater danger than any mundane violence.


From time to time Rap would rise from his seat and call directions through the hatch to the driver on his box, for darkness and whirling snow had
reduced visibility to almost nothing. He could have managed without a coachman had he wished, controlling the horses directly, but any such
blatant display of sorcery on this ill-omened night would be dangerous in the extreme. Even the farsight he was using to guide the carriage was
perhaps a risk, although farsight was a very inconspicuous use of power, not easily detected.


The brief outbreak of sorcery he had sensed after the imperor's death had died away. The occult plane of the ambience had fallen silent again, just
as mysteriously silent as it had been all through his bone-breaking forty-day ride in from Kinvale. Now he could perceive no magical activity except
faint tremors from the minor sorcerous gadgetry so common in the capital-magic locks, trained dice, cloaks of invisibility, and other such fanciful
devices. Those would mostly belong to mundanes. Of course occult shields had always been popular in Hub, and many buildings were wholly or
partly shielded; he could not tell what sorcery might be in use within those. But the silence was ominous, in a city that normally seethed with
sorcery.


He was exhausted by a long day on the back of too many other long days. He felt old and weary. Thirty-five was not old, he told himself sternly. It
wasn't young, either, he retorted snappily. It was twice the age he'd been the last time he'd visited Hub.