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

horrid flat dugs. Every ogre was enscribed with twisted tattoos and hung
with necklaces and bracelets and anklets cobbled from sharks' teeth,
swordfish swords, tarnished brass and silver, broken bottle necks, and other
seawrack. Teeth and nails black as chert were tough enough to rend
humans in half, and the monsters revelled in an orgy of bloodlust.

As Heart of a Lion watched, an ogre drove a spear through a sailor's guts,
hoisted the squirming woman by the haft and her hair, then bit out her
throat so her head flopped against her spine. Two ogres swatted a pirate
flat, then grabbed him by both arms and yanked: the limbs dislocated, then
tore from the sockets in gouts of blood. Many sailors and pirates didn't
fight at all, just ran in terrified circles, and Heart of a Lion couldn't blame
them. Others fought back. Harun swung a wicked boarding axe to slice a
merrow across the waist and spill its guts, then swung the other way to
hamstring another rampaging monster and bring it crashing to the deck.

Maddest of all was the berserk Belinda. Since conditions changed rapidly
and unexpectedly at sea, Imperial Marines were trained to improvise in
battle, to attack with whatever came to hand. Bereft of her sword, Belinda
hefted one of the many barrels of lamp oil that rolled and careened across
the deck. Gargling her own battle cry, she smashed the barrel into the
muzzle of a marauding merrow. Oak slats cracked and liquid gushed over
both combatants. Oddly, the sharp reek set the merrow stumbling
backward, clawing at its eyes, gasping and retching. Belinda merely shook
her streaming blonde bangs from her eyes, hefted the empty cask again,
and walloped the merrow in the breast. When it fell, Belinda beat the cask
to fragments on its hard head. Heart of a Lion grunted at her mindless
ferocity, and reminded himself to sheer clear of Imperial Marines.
As humans struggled and died, Heart of a Lion was disheartened to see
more merrow swarm over the sides, rapacious as rats. A pirate swung a
scimitar to lop off a black-nailed hand against the gunwale, but another
merrow seized his sash and yanked him overboard like a pike on a line. A
tall and comical head reared suddenly alongside, with goggling eyes like
lamps, an elongated nose like a flute, and raddled brown skin segmented
like a scorpion's carapace. A seahorse, Heart of a Lion realized, fully as big
as a land steed from the great plains of Amn. Two merrow had wrapped
long arms around its neck, and now used the seahorse's curved back to
vault onto the ship.

Yet on this benighted day of strange sights, Heart of a Lion was astonished
to see that Belinda had spoken true and he'd guessed right: this assault
was controlled by a single mastermind.
By the cog's prow, farthest from the fighting, a single octopus tentacle
remained suspended in the air, jigging and bobbing as the giant
bottom-dweller writhed in pain. Yet poised on the tip of the tentacle, like a
canary perched on a finger, squatted a sahuagin. Tall as a man, hunched
like a pelican, with a head like a cod and the body of a frog, finned and
spined, the "sea devil" waved a narwhal tusk as it exhorted its queer troops
to attack. It croaked and squawked and waved both crooked arms wildly:
only the barbs of its froggy feet clamped tight kept it from toppling. A