"Roland Green - Conan at the Demon's Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Roland)

metal, sometimes their own bronze or copper, sometimes captured steel.

I do not know how long the fight lasted. I had my broadsword, a short-handled

mace, and good Aquilonian mail with a helm of Zingaran style standing between me

and the Picts. All did good service, too. I know I slew a fair hand'sworth and

more, and took only two grazes in return.

Others were less fortunate. Six of us died or were hurt past fighting in that

brawl at close quarters. It ended in our favor because, as was most often the

case, the two clans' war parties had leapt into battle without any common plan.

Most Pictish chiefs would sooner serve up their sons in a stew than take orders

from another chief.

So there was no one to tell the first clan to hold their arrows until the second

had drawn away from us. The first clan began shooting again, and their arrows
rained down alike on friend and foe. Foes mostly bore armor, although a

Gunderman died with an arrow in the eye. Friends were mostly naked, and another

score of Picts died howling or moaning with Pictish arrows through their

gizzards.

Sarabos leapt into the midst of this fratricidal slaughter with a broadsword in

one hand and a long dagger in the other. I saw him behead one Pict, geld a

second, chop the arm from a third, and break the leg of a fourth with a kick

like a mule's, all in one continuous flow of movement. A circle grew around him,

inhabited only by the dead or those about to die.

At last he sheathed his weapons, hoisted the fallen Gunderman over one shoulder

like a miller hoisting a sack of grain, and pointed toward the rocks.

"I thought I heard you bid us withdraw that way," he said to me. "I see at least

one cave in that ravine to the south." With a long arm covered in other men's

blood, he pointed.