"Duncan, Dave - A Handful Of Men 02 - Upland Outlaws" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

Upland OutlawsUpland Outlaws
Book 2 of A Handful of Men
By Dave Duncan
ISBN: 0-345-38477-6
PROLOGUE
"Ghosts?" said the old woman. She raised her lantern and peered up into the
dark. "Something bothering you tonight, Ghosts? "
Wind wailed in the high rafters and stirred the hems of the dust sheets
shrouding the furniture. Casements rattled far off. The hall was very high,
rising clear to the roof of the house. The faint glow of the lantern did not
reach up there, but she needed no light to know of the staircases and balconies,
the great fieldstone chimney at one end, the minstrels' gallery at the other,
and all the grimy windows. She sensed something fretting, something intangible
up there in the dark, listening amid the cobwebs and the beams.
"What ails you tonight, Ghosts?" She cackled.
Casements tapped in the darkness. Wind howled around a gable. Underfoot, little
gray balls of dust rolled away out of sight.
The woman shivered, as the cold sank into her old bones. She tugged her shawls
tighter with knotted fingers and began to hobble along the hall. The golden glow
of her lantern reflected back from high windows and threw her shadow on the dust
sheets. Often in ages past this hall had rung with the laughter of joyous
parties, with music, and dancing, and feasting. No one but she had trodden these
boards in many years.
Again she sensed the watchers, the listeners. She felt their hatred, their
anger.
"No one coming tonight, Ghosts!" she cried. Her thin voice could barely raise an
echo over the wind. "Snowing outside, Ghosts. Heavier than ever. Rare to see
such snow, and three weeks yet till Winterfest! But he won't come tonight!"
Shrill wails ...
Only the wind, others would have said, but she knew better. Then she paused,
head cocked, straining dull ears.
"Ah!" she said. "Bells?" She waited. Yes, again she heard that heavy note,
carried on the wind. "So that's it? That's what disturbs your sleep,, is it?"
She cackled once more, reassured. "He's gone! The Evil has his black soul
tonight, then? Small wonder you stir tonight, Ghosts!"
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
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