"Robert E. Howard - Conan - A Witch Shall be Born" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howard Robert E)

were fully armed and drawn up in a square, but there were only five hundred of them. They took a
heavy toll before they were cut down, but there could be only one conclusion to such a battle. And
while her people were being slaughtered before her, Taramis stood on the palace steps, with
Constantius's arm about her waist, and laughed like a heartless, beautiful fiend! Gods, it's all
mad - mad!
"I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to the courtyard wall, and before
they overpowered him the dead men were strewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they
dragged him down, a hundred against one. When I saw him fall I dragged myself away feeling as if
the world had burst under my very fingers. I heard Constantius call to his dogs to take the
captain alive - stroking his mustache, with that hateful smile on his lips!"
That smile was on the lips of Constantius at that very moment. He sat his horse among a
cluster of his men - thick-bodied Shemites with curled blue-black beards and hooked noses; the low-
swinging sun struck glints from their peaked helmets and the silvered scales of their corselets.
Nearly a mile behind, the walls and towers of Khauran rose sheer out of the meadowlands.
By the side of the caravan road a heavy cross had been planted, and on this grim tree a man
hung, nailed there by iron spikes through his hands and feet. Naked but for a loin-cloth, the man
was almost a giant in stature, and his muscles stood out in thick corded ridges on limbs and body,
which the sun had long ago burned brown. The perspiration of agony beaded his face and his mighty
breast, but from under the tangled black mane that fell over his low, broad forehead, his blue
eyes blazed with an unquenched fire. Blood oozed sluggishly from the lacerations in his hands and
feet.
Constantius saluted him mockingly.
"I am sorry, captain," he said, "that I cannot remain to ease your last hours, but I have
duties to perform in yonder city - I must not keep your delicious queen waiting!" He laughed
softly. "So I leave you to your own devices - and those beauties!" He pointed meaningly at the
black shadows which swept incessantly back and forth, high above.
"Were it not for them, I imagine that a powerful brute like yourself should live on the cross


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for days. Do not cherish any illusions of rescue because I am leaving you unguarded. I have had it
proclaimed that anyone seeking to take your body, living or dead, from the cross, will be flayed
alive together with all the members of his family, in the public square. I am so firmly
established in Khauran that my order is as good as a regiment of guardsmen. I am leaving no guard,
because the vultures will not approach as long as anyone is near, and I do not wish them to feel
any constraint. That is also why I brought you so far from the city. These desert vultures
approach the walls no closer than this spot.
"And so, brave captain, farewell! I will remember you when, in an hour, Taramis lies in my
arms."
Blood started afresh from the pierced palms as the victim's mallet-like fists clenched
convulsively on the spike-heads. Knots and bunches of muscle started out of the massive arms, and
Conan beat his head forward and spat savagely at Constantius's face. The voivode laughed coolly,
wiped the saliva from his gorget and reined his horse about.
"Remember me when the vultures are tearing at your living flesh," he called mockingly. "The
desert scavengers are a particularly voracious breed. I have seen men hang for hours on a cross,
eyeless, earless, and scalpless, before the sharp beaks had eaten their way into their vitals."
Without a backward glance he rode toward the city, a supple, erect figure, gleaming in his
burnished armor, his stolid, bearded henchmen jogging beside him. A faint rising of dust from the