"Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - Dune 09 - House Corrino" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

pads, side, the Fremen raiders hauled away enough treasure to ransom a Id.

What could the Baron possibly want with such wealth?

\t noon, precisely on schedule, Stilgar heard explosions from the vil-

of Bar Es Rashid at the base of the ridgeтАФthe second Fremen razzia d attacking the Harkonnen
guard post in a well-coordinated assault, тАвour unmarked ornithopters circled the rock buttress
gracefully, flap-

their mechanical wings until Stilgar's men guided them onto the ing slabs. Freed construction
workers and the Fremen commandos ed the craft with the packaged, twice-stolen melange.

It was time for the operation to end.

Stilgar lined the Harkonnen guards along a sheer dropoff over the dusty huts of Bar Es Rashid far
below. After hours of hard work and brewing fear, the jowly Harkonnen captain was fully sober
now, his hair sweaty and eyes haunted. Standing before him, Stilgar studied the man with utter
contempt.

Without a word, he drew his crysknife and slit the man up the middle, from pubic bone to sternum.
The captain gasped in disbelief as his blood and entrails spilled out into the sun.

"Waste of moisture," Turok muttered beside him.

Several panicked Harkonnen prisoners tried to break away, but the Fremen fell upon them, hurling
some over the cliff and stabbing others with sharp blades. Those who stood their ground were
dispatched quickly and painlessly. The Fremen took much longer with the cowards.

The sunken-eyed construction workers were ordered to load bodies into the ornithopters, even the
decaying corpses found in the passageways. Back at Red Wall Sietch, Stilgar's people would render
the bodies in a deathstill, extracting every drop of water for the benefit of the tribe. Desecrated
Hadith would be left empty again, a ghost sietch. A warning to the Baron.

One by one the loaded 'thopters rose like dark birds into the clear sky, while Stilgar's men trotted
beneath the hot sun of afternoon, their mission
complete.

As soon as Baron Harkonnen discovered the loss of his spice hoard and the murder of his guards,
he would retaliate against Bar Es Rashid, even though those poor villagers had had nothing to do
with the raid. His mouth set in a grim line, Stilgar decided to move the entire population to the
safety of a distant sietch.

There, along with the captive construction workers, they would be turned into Fremen, or killed if
they did not cooperate. Considering their squalid lives in Bar Es Rashid, Stilgar felt he was doing
them a favor.

When Liet-Kynes returned from his meeting with the Emperor on Kaitain, he would be very
pleased with what the Fremen had accomplished.