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

worn trail marked their passing.
The man hanging on the cross was the one touch of sentient life in a landscape that seemed
desolate and deserted in the late evening. Khauran, less than a mile away, might have been on the
other side of the world, and existing in another age.
Shaking the sweat out of his eyes, Conan stared blankly at the familiar terrain. On either
side of the city, and beyond it, stretched the fertile meadowlands, with cattle browsing in the
distance where fields and vineyards checkered the plain. The western and northern horizons were
dotted with villages, miniature in the distance. A lesser distance to the southeast a silvery
gleam marked the course of a river, and beyond that river sandy desert began abruptly to stretch
away and away beyond the horizon. Conan stared at that expanse of empty waste shimmering tawnily
in the late sunlight as a trapped hawk stares at the open sky. A revulsion shook him when he
glanced at the gleaming towers of Khauran. The city had betrayed him -trapped him into
circumstances that left him hanging to a wooden cross like a hare nailed to a tree.
A red lust for vengeance swept away the thought. Curses ebbed fitfully from the man's lips.
All his universe contracted, focused, became incorporated in the four iron spikes that held him
from life and freedom. His great muscles quivered, knotting like iron cables. With the sweat
starting out on his graying skin, he sought to gain leverage, to tear the nails from the wood. It
was useless. They had been driven deep. Then he tried to tear his hands off the spikes, and it was
not the knifing, abysmal agony that finally caused him to cease his efforts, but the futility of
it. The spike-heads were broad and heavy; he could not drag them through the wounds. A surge of
helplessness shook the giant, for the first time in his life. He hung motionless, his head resting
on his breast, shutting his eyes against the aching glare of the sun.
A beat of wings caused him to look, just as a feathered shadow shot down out of the sky. A
keen beak, stabbing at his eyes, cut his cheek, and he jerked his head aside, shutting his eyes
involuntarily. He shouted, a croaking, desperate shout of menace, and the vultures swerved away
and retreated, frightened by the sound. They resumed their wary circling above his head. Blood
trickled over Conan's mouth, and he licked his lips involuntarily, spat at the salty taste.
Thirst assailed him savagely. He had drunk deeply of wine the night before, and no water had
touched his lips since before the battle in the square, that dawn. And killing was thirsty, salt-
sweaty work. He glared at the distant river as a man in hell glares through the opened grille. He
thought of gushing freshets of white water he had breasted, laved to the shoulders in liquid jade.
He remembered great horns of foaming ale, jacks of sparkling wine gulped carelessly or spilled on
the tavern floor. He bit his lip to keep from bellowing in intolerable anguish as a tortured
animal bellows.
The sun sank, a lurid ball in a fiery sea of blood. Against a crimson rampart that banded the
horizon the towers of the city floated unreal as a dream. The very sky was tinged with blood to
his misted glare. He licked his blackened lips and stared with bloodshot eyes at the distant
river. It too seemed crimson with blood, and the shadows crawling up from the east seemed black as
ebony.
In his dulled ears sounded the louder beat of wings. Lifting his head he watched with the
burning glare of a wolf the shadows wheeling above him. He knew that his shouts would frighten
them away no longer. One dipped - dipped - lower and lower. Conan drew his head back as far as he
could, waiting with terrible patience. The vulture swept in with a swift roar of wings. Its beak


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Rob...Conan%20-%20A%20Witch%20Shall%20be%20Born.txt (6 of 19) [10/18/2004 5:25:11 PM]
 file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Robert%20E.%20Howard%20-%20Conan%20-%20A%20Witch%20Shall%20be%20Born.txt

flashed down, ripping the skin on Conan's chin as he jerked his head aside; then before the bird
could flash away, Conan's head lunged forward on his mighty neck muscles, and his teeth, snapping