"Raymond E. Feist - Riftwar Legends - Honoured Enemy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feist Raymond E)

The prints weren't made by the heavy sandals and footcloths of the Tsurani, but by the booted feet
of moredhel, men, and the deeper hoofprints of horses and mountain trolls.
What was chilling, though, was that there were prints heading back up the trail and they were
fresh, so fresh that droplets of moisture were still oozing into them as ice formed. But not as
many as had come in. It was hard to tell - perhaps fifty at most, and no horses.


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Battle losses? No, he had not seen any moredhel corpses around the fort. There should have at
least been some wounded, drops of blood, a dragging footstep, but these moredhel had been running.
Why the haste?
He looked up. Tinuva was still above him, watchful. Dennis pointed to the trail then to the north-
west and made the gesture for moredhel, then held his ringer tips to his throat, indicating that
it was only minutes, a matter of heart beats since their passing.
Tinuva nodded and moved out. Dennis looked at Gregory who set off as well, crossing to the other
side of the trail and moving into the stream where he could travel without leaving tracks.
Dennis slipped down to the Tsurani body and touched its leg. The body was just stiffening, dead
several hours at the most; had he died earlier in the night rigor would have set in. Looking at
the ground, he could figure it out easily enough. The man was a sentry, guarding the trail while
the attack on the fort went in, or had in fact already taken the position. It had been a clean
kill, stealthy, throat cut from ear to ear and no sign of struggle other than the final spasmodic
thrashing of a dying man.
Dennis looked back to the north-west and caught a glimpse of Gregory who was looking back. Dennis
pointed to himself and then towards the stockade. Gregory nodded and disappeared into the mist-
shrouded forest.
Choosing speed over caution Dennis got back up on to the trail and started off at a slow trot.
The task now was to find out which direction the rest of the moredhel had taken. If the band had
split up, scattering after the attack to throw off any pursuit, he'd swing his own men in behind
the group heading towards Mad Wayne's Fort, finish them, then reoccupy Brendan's. He'd send
Gregory and Tinuva back to Lord Brucal's base camp to ask for reinforcements while Dennis and his
company repaired the stockade. But, if the moredhel were indeed returning in force to clean up the
Tsurani dead, as Tuniva speculated, Dennis wanted to be well clear of the area before they got
back. Defending a rebuilt stockade was one thing; fighting among the ashes on an exposed hillock
while being hit from all sides was quite another.
He slowed as he reached the edge of the forest, slipping in behind a towering pine. Closer now to
the stockade, he could pick out more details though the smoke was still thick. There were only a
couple of Tsurani dead around the northern approach, for the bulk of them were by the gate and the
road that headed south-west and the safety of their territory.
As he moved slowly, he noticed something down by the stream. A dark mound rose up amid a small
copse of trees. It was almost covered with snow. It took a moment for Dennis's eye to make sense
of the dark shape, but then he saw it: moredhel dead, several dozen of them and the picture began
to fit together in Dennis's mind.
Clever bastards. They had carried off their dead to leave a puzzle, hiding them nearby. In another
two hours, Dennis would have been looking at just another snow-covered bump in the earth. If that
force was as large as Tinuva speculated, most of them might be heading up to visit the Tsurani now
holding Mad Wayne's, but chances were the rest were lurking nearby, watching, most likely on the
other side of the clearing.
Damn clever. Then a more obvious possibility occurred to him.