"Kenneth C. Flint - Gods of Eire 01 - The Riders of the Sidhe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Kenneth C)

She dragged him from the hall and then ran ahead, urging him on. Uncertainly
he followed her out of the keep and onto the upper parapet of the walls. Below
them the attackers were flooding into the fortress grounds. The two passed
defenders who were hurling spears and fragments of broken wall down on the
advancing grey-clad soldiers.

By one section of the outer wall Lugh and Taiilta stopped. Not far ahead their
warriors held a stairway against the enemy swarming upward from the breached
section. They were determined, sacrificing themselves valiantly to keep back
the overwhelming numbers below, but they couldnt

hold long.

Taiilta turned a rusted torch socket in the outer wall and pressed inward on a
massive stone. It swung back, revealing a staircase spiraling down, through
the thickness of the wall.

"This passage leads down to a sheltered cove beyond the point!" she shouted to
him above the battle's din. "A boat is hidden there. Take it and sail away.
You should be unseen. Go east to Manannan's Isle. You'll find help there!"

He listened to her words in disbelief.

"You really believe I can run away from this? Leave my friends? Leave you, my
aunt? My only family?"

"Lugh, I am no aunt to you," she told him. "You are not one of us. I am the
daughter of Mac-Erc, the last great High-King of our tribe. Long ago we vowed
to protect you, and I have been your foster mother ever since."

He couldn't grasp what she was telling him. This last assault on his sense of
reality had dazed him. He shook his head and held on doggedly to the only
truth that he did know.

"No ties of blood could make you more a mother to me," he cried. "You're the
only family I have. All I love. I won't leave you!"

In despair she searched for the words that would make him go. She could find
none.

She moved close and looked sorrowfully into his eyes.

"I love you as well," she told him gently. "And as if you were my son.
Bemember that."

She swung back her arm and, with a skillfully placed uppercut, dropped Lugh
where he stood.

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