"Clayton Emery - Forgotten Realms - Forged In Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

"Come closer, jackals! Taste the iron tongue of the Imperial Marines!"
"Ilmater made me to suffer!" sighed Heart of a Lion. His pirates' attack had
stalled, and might even fail if the sailors rallied around that devilish
lieutenant. "But Sharess finds favor for those who love life!"

Raising the brass tube in his hand, Heart of a Lion sighted down its hollow
length at the ducking, weaving lieutenant, then stroked his fingers down
the tube, invoking, "As'tal rifa!"
Like a wyvern's belch, from the tube billowed flame that coalesced into a
sphere and sizzled through the air. Big as a fistful of flaming pitch, the
fireball spanked off the lieutenant's turbaned helmet. Purple silk scorched
and ignited, as did hanks of short blonde hair below her cork helmet.
Panicked, the lieutenant flipped off her burning helmet, and was in turn
slammed alongside the head by a cutlass blade. She dropped, face down in
blood.

Yet Heart of a Lion's attack had sufficed too well. The fireball ricocheted
from the sturdy cork helmet and lodged amidst tarred ropes and deadeyes
in the standing rigging. Instantly tar sputtered and flared like kindling.
Paint on woodwork blistered and peeled, smoked and curled and burst into
flame. Within seconds the fire streaked up the rigging and set ablaze the
mizzensail, the last of three.

"Fire aloft!" hollered a pirate. Instantly seamen chopped at stays to bring
the sail down. The merchant sailors joined in, a tacit surrender, because
everyone afloat feared fire at sea. Slipping in blood, they loosed belaying
pins to free the running rigging. Let go, pushed by the wind, the flapping
flaming sail flopped over the taffrail and hissed to extinction in the pitching
waves. Pirates and sailors alike lowered buckets on ropes and sloshed the
quarterdeck to douse stray sparks. Blood swirled with seawater and ran out
the scuppers.

As the emergency passed, and sailors and pirates caught their breath,
Heart of a Lion puffed his way up the short companionway. Graced with a
glorious black beard combed and perfumed (and rubbed with soot to
disguise gray hairs), the pirate chief wore a flowing red shirt that minimized
his potbelly, blue trousers cut off at the knee, and a wide silk scarf of gold
that matched a yellow turban. Spreading his hands, he announced,
"Gentlemen, ladies! Fellow Brethren of the Brine! The gods decreed we
possess your worthy vessel, and so it came to pass, so you should find no
shame in surrender. Tell me, if you please, who among you is leader?"

With the captain and first mate dead, the worried sailors turned to a
grizzled man with a salt-and-pepper beard and scarred cheek. Like most
sailors, he wore patched baggy trousers and a plain sturdy shirt, but laced
across his chest was a red leather vest wildly embroidered with slant-eyed
dragons and doe-eyed maidens. Heart of the Lion noticed most of the
sailors wore similar exotic vests. Obviously, this ship returned from far over
the eastern horizon.
"I'm Bollus, esteemed sir, humble bosun of the Eight Lightnings out of