"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 5 - Icefalcons Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

hook for his hand, at Bison Hill."
Bison Hill was the only place the mud-diggers used for meetings, the only landmark large enough to catch
their blunted attention. The Icefalcon only asked, "A hook?"
Vair na-Chandros, he thought. It had to be.
"A big man with hair that curls like that of a bison's hump, gray with age, not white in youth as many of
the black warriors. His eyes are yellow and his voice like dirt in a tin pot. He has a silver hook in place of
his right hand, and his men call him Lord. You know this man?"
"I know him." The Icefalcon's face was impassive as he turned the woodchuck meat on the flat rocks
among the coals.
"In the days of the Dark ones, this hook-handed one commanded the forces of the Alketch that came to
help humankind against the Dark. He abandoned them in the burning Nests that he might preserve his
own followers when he went to war in the Alketch. After that I am told he tried to make himself Emperor
of the South by wedding the old Emperor's daughter against her will. Now he rides north, does he, with
less than six score men, and wagons filled with uncanny things?"
He sat up a little and gazed south across the broken lands, green miles of chilly springtime where a
red-tailed hawk circled lazily and a couple of uintatheria, ungainly moving mountains with their tusked and
plated heads swinging back and forth, ambled from one gully to another in their eternal quest for fresh
leaves.
But what he saw was the rainbow figure descending the steps of the Keep in the mists and the hatred in
those fox-gold eyes when they looked on Ingold Inglorion.
He saw too the upraised hooks, scarlet with firelight, summoning back his troops out of the darkness of
the burning Nests. Saw Ingold-and hundreds of others-engulfed and borne away by the Dark.
It came back to him also what Gil-Shalos had told him about the Emperor's daughter of the South.
"I like this not, o my sister," he said at last. "This Vair is an evil man, and now you tell me he rides with an
evil magic in his train. Whether this be a mage or a talisman or an object of power, I would feel better if I
knew something more of his intent, before he takes the boy into his grasp. Will you remain here, my
enemy, and look out for the boy? If they await Vair's coming, having brought Tir this distance, he should
be safe enough."
"I will abide," said the warchief. "He owes me somewhat, this Wise One."
"Good." The Icefalcon rose. "Then let us ride, o my sister," he said.

Bright against the green-black trees, a red scarf flashed, slashing to and fro.
"They're in sight," said Melantrys of the Guards.
As when wind passes over a standing grove, with a single movement the men and women on the north
watchtower bent their bows, hooked the strings into place. Another movement-another wind gust the soft
deadly clattering of arrow shafts.
The same wind moved Gil, automatic now but still rich with heightened sensation in her mind and heart:
the spiny rough feathers, the waxy smoothness of horsehair and yew. From the watchtower's foot the
narrow road led down to the Arrow River Gorge, champagne-pale between clustering walls of mingled
green: fir, hawthorn, hazel, fern.
Rustling muttered above the breeze shift of the trees. Sharp as the red arbutus in the ditches came the
whinny of horses.
"The fat bleedin' shame of it," sighed Caldern, a northcountry man so big he looked like a thunderstorm in
his black Guards tunic and coat. "Whatever you do, lassie, don't kill the horses. We can aye use 'em."
Rishyu Hetakebnion, Lord Ankres' youngest son, whispered to Gil, "Do you think we'll turn them back?"
He'd spent hours dressing and braiding his hair for this occasion. He hadn't liked being put in the north
tower company as a common archer, but his father had insisted upon it: If you're going to give commands
one day, you must first learn how to obey them.
Gil shook her head. "Not a hope."
The leading ranks of the Alketch army came into view.