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

It is no easy matter to count troops and estimate materiel through a hunk of ensorcelled ruby an inch and
three-quarters long: scrying can tell a wizard where and if, but seldom how many.
By the time Melantrys and Lank Yar, the Keep's chief hunter, returned from reconnaissance with the
news that the Alketch troops numbered nearly eleven hundred strong, the enemy was only hours from the
Tall Gates.
They were armed for siege, too, Melantrys said. Mules and oxen hauled two "turtles," constructions of
log and leather designed to protect soldiers while they undermined towers and walls.
With a full muster of the Keep's available warriors and all ablebodied adults to back them up, Janus
estimated they could hold the Tall Gates for a time, but against trained men the cost would probably be
terrible.
"With all due respect to Mistress Hornbeam and Master Barrelstave," he'd whispered to Minalde at the
tense convocation that had followed Melantrys' return, "one seasoned warrior properly armed can
account for half a dozen volunteers. Leavin' aside that we can't afford to lose a soul here, their line'll cave.
And for what?"
The commander of the Alketch troops was a srocky goldenskinned Delta Islander in an inlaid helmet
bristling with spikes. He drew rein just where the road curved on its final approach to the Gates, and Gil
could see the choke of men behind him, armored in bronze and steel and black-lacquered cane in the
milky light of the overcast morning.
Looking at the Tall Gates.
"That's it," murmured Janus, a few feet along the makeshift wood rampart from where Gil stood. He
wore full battle gear, something fewer than half the Guards possessed: black enameled breastplate and
helm, rerebraces and pauldrons and gloves, unornamented save for the gold eagles of the House of
Dare.
"Think about it real good before you come on, me jolly boy. Surely there's another party you can go to
instead?"
But Gil knew there wasn't. With the slow-growing cold of the Summerless Year, even the settlements
along the river valley had waned, dying out or succumbing to bandit troops. She had heard that the
situation in the Felwoods was worse.
The Keep of Dare in its high cold vale was the last organized center of civilization for many, many
leagues, the last large, stable source of food production. Elsewhere was only banditry, White Raiders,
and spreading chaos.
There was no other party to go to.
For the past seven years, the people of the Keep had been working on the watchtowers of the Tall
Gates. They'd repaired the old stonework as well as they could without proper quarrying tools and raised
palisades of sharpened tree trunks around the platforms on top.
Bandit troops had burned the towers twice, but even before the disaster of the Summerless Year it had
been hard to get draft animals to haul stone up from the river valley.
Gil would have bet a dozen shirt-laces they would be in flames again within an hour, had she been able to
find a taker.
Between the towers another palisade stretched, a rough chevaux-de-friese of outward-pointing stakes,
hastily cut and sharpened, fired hard, braced in the earth, and interwoven with all the brush that could be
gathered to make the hedge thicker yet.
Eleven hundred troops, thought Gil, her gloved fingers icy on the arrow-nock. They weren't going to turn
back.
Battle drums echoed in the high rocks of the pass, ominous, palpable in the marrow of the bones. The
golden commander edged his golden horse aside. The ranks parted-ebony soldiers from the Black
Coast, ivory from the White, and the red-brown D'haalac borderlanders.
Variegated banners lifted and curled in the morning wind. For some reason Gil remembered old Dr.
Bannister of the UCLA history department, dry and fragile as a cast cicada skin, standing at the
lecture-hall podium saying, "Henry II marched his armies against Philip Augustus..."