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

6 Barbara Humbly

Puzzled, the boy followed her.

The first bandit who had attacked her still lay in the
clay muck of the roadbed. The soaking blood had turned
it into a mess of heel gouges, strewn with severed entrails;

the stink was appalling. The man was still groaning weakly.
Against the matte pallor of the foggy morning, the scarlet
of the blood stood out shockingly bright.

Jenny sighed, feeling suddenly cold and weary and
unclean, looking upon what she had done and knowing
what it was up to her yet to do. She knelt beside the dying
man, drawing the stillness of her magic around her again.
She was aware of Gareth's approach, his boots threshing
through the dew-soaked bindweed in a hurried rhythm
that broke when he tripped on his sword. She felt a tired
stirring of anger at him for having made this necessary.
Had he not cried out, both she and this poor, vicious,
dying brute would each have gone their ways...

... And he would doubtless have killed Gareth after
she passed. And other travelers besides.

She had long since given up trying to unpick wrong
from right, present should from future if. If there was a
pattern to all things, she had given up thinking that it was
simple enough to lie within her comprehension. Still, her
soul felt filthy within her as she put her hands to the dying
man's clammy, greasy temples, tracing the proper runes
while she whispered the death-spells. She felt the life go
out of him and tasted the bile of self-loathing in her mouth.

Behind her, Gareth whispered, "YouЧhe'sЧhe's
dead."

She got to her feet, shaking the bloody dirt from her
skirts. "I could not leave him for the weasels and foxes,"
she replied, starting to walk away. She could hear the
small carrion-beasts already, gathering at the top of the
bank above the misty slot of the road, drawn to the blood-
smell and waiting impatiently for the killer to abandon
her prey. Her voice was brusqueЧshe had always hated

Dragonsbdne 7

the death-spells. Having grown up in a land without law,
she had killed her first man when she was fourteen, and