"Hambly, Barbara - Dragon's Bane UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

She was directly in front of him when a boy's voice
shouted from down the southward road, "LOOK OUT!"

Jenny whipped her halberd clear of its rest as the bandit
woke with a start. He saw her and roared a curse. Periph-
erally Jenny was aware of hooves pounding up the road
toward her; the other traveler, she thought with grim
annoyance, whose well-meant warning had snapped the
man from his trance. As the bandit bore down upon her,
she got a glimpse of a young man riding out of the mist
full-pelt, clearly intent upon rescue.

The bandit was armed with a short sword, but swung

4 Barbara Hambly

at her with the flat of it, intending to unhorse her without
damaging her too badly to rape later. She feinted with the
halberd to bring his weapon up, then dipped the long blade
on the pole's end down under his guard. Her legs clinched
to Moon Horse's sides to take the shock as the weapon
knifed through the man's belly. The leather was tough,
but there was no metal underneath. Shs ripped the blade
clear as the man doubled up around it, screaming and
clawing; both horses danced and veered with the smell
of the hot, spraying blood. Before the man hit the muddy
bed of the road, Jenny had wheeled her horse and was
riding to the aid of her prospective knight-errant, who
was engaged in a sloppy, desperate battle with the bandit
who had been concealed behind the ruined outer wall.

Her rescuer was hampered by his long cloak of ruby
red velvet, which had got entangled with the basketwork
hilt of his jeweled longsword. His horse was evidently
better trained and more used to battle than he was: the
maneuverings of the big liver-bay gelding were the only
reason the boy hadn't been killed outright. The bandit,
who had gotten himself mounted at the boy's first cry of
warning, had driven them back into the hazel thickets that
grew along the tumbled stones of the inn wall, and, as
Jenny kicked Moon Horse into the fray, the boy's trailing
cloak hung itself up on the low branches and jerked its
wearer ignominiously out of the saddle with the horse's
next swerve.

Using her right hand as the fulcrum of a swing. Jenny
swept the halberd's blade at the bandit's sword arm. The
man veered his horse to face her; she got a glimpse of
piggy, close-set eyes under the rim of a dirty iron cap.