"Robert E. Howard - Conan - Drums of Tobalku" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howard Robert E)

lay across his knees, and she looked up at him somewhat in surprize, but without fear or
embarrassment. She might have been a child submitting to a new kind of play. Something about her
direct gaze confused him. If she had screamed, wept, fought, or smiled knowingly, he would have
known how to deal with her.
"Who in Mitra's name are you, girl?" he asked roughly. "You are neither touched with the sun,
nor playing a game with me. Your speech shows you to be no ignorant country lass, innocent in
ignorance. Yet you seem to know nothing of the world and its ways."
"I am a daughter of Gazal," she answered helplessly. "If you saw Gazal, perhaps you would
understand."
He lifted her and placed her on the sand. Rising, he brought a saddle blanket and set it out
for her.
"Sleep, Lissa," he said, his voice harsh with conflicting emotions. "Tomorrow I mean to see
Gazal."
At dawn they started westward. Amalric had lifted Lissa onto the camel, showing her how to
maintain her balance. She clung to the seat with both hands, showing no knowledge whatever of
camels, which again surprized the young Aquilonian. A girl raised in the desert, she had never
before been on a camel, nor, until the preceding night, had she ever ridden or been carried on a
horse. Amalric had manufactured a sort of cloak for her, and she wore it without question, not
asking whence it came, accepting it as she accepted all things he did for her, gratefully but
blindly, without asking the reason. Amalric did not tell her that the silk that shielded her from
the sun had once covered the skin of her abductor.
As they rode she again begged him to tell her something of the world, like a child asking for
a story.
"I know Aquilonia is far from this desert," she said. "Stygia lies between, and the Lands of
Shem, and other countries. How is it that you are here, so far from your homeland?"
He rode for a space in silence, his hand on the camel's guide-rope.
"Argos and Stygia were at war," he said abruptly. "Koth became embroiled. The Kothians urged
a simultaneous invasion of Stygia. Argos raised an army of mercenaries, which went into ships and
sailed southward along the coast. At the same time, a Kothic army was to invade Stygia by land. I
was one of that mercenary army. We met the Stygian fleet and defeated it, driving it back into
Khemi. We should have landed, looted the city, and advanced along the course of the Styx - but our
admiral was cautious. Our leader was Prince Zapayo da Kova, a Zingaran. We cruised southward until
we reached the jungle-clad coasts of Kush. There we landed, and the ships anchored, while the army
pushed eastward along the Stygian frontier, burning and pillaging as we went. It was our intention
to turn northward at a certain point and strike into the heart of Stygia to form a juncture with
the Kothic host which was supposed to be pushing down from the north. Then word came that we were
betrayed. Koth had concluded a separate peace with the Stygians. A Stygian army was pushing
southward to intercept us, while another already had cut us off from the coast.
"Prince Zapayo, in desperation, conceived the mad idea of marching eastward, hoping to skirt
the Stygian border and eventually reach the eastern lands of Shem. But the army from the north
overtook us. We turned and fought. All day we fought, and finally they gave before us, their
retreat turning into rout. But the next day the pursuing army came up from the west, and crushed
between the hosts, our army ceased to be. We were broken, annihilated, destroyed. There were few
left to flee. But when night fell, I broke away with my companion, a Cimmerian named Conan, a
brute of a man with the strength of a bull.
"We rode southward into the desert, because there was no other direction in which we might
go. Conan had been in this part of the world before, and he believed we had a chance to survive.
Far to the south we found an oasis, but Stygian riders harried us, and we fled again, from oasis
to oasis, fleeing, starving, thirsting, until we found ourselves in a barren, unknown land of
blazing and empty sand. We rode until our horses were reeling, and we were half delirious. Then