"Brian Jacques - Redwall 02 - Mossflower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacques Brian)

Oh fight, lads, fight, Scratch, lads, bite, 11

Gonff will dine on cheese and wine, When he gets home tonight.

Martin dug his heels into the snow, skidding as he was dragged bodily through
the outer wallgates of the forbidding heap he had sighted earlier that day.
Armored soldiers clanked and clattered together as they were dragged inward by
the ropes that restrained the prisoner, none of them wanting to get too close
to the fighting mouse.

Blacktooth and Splitnose closed the main gates with much bad-tempered
slamming. Powdery snow blew down on them from the top of the perimeter walls.
The parade ground snow was hammered flat and slippery by soldiers dashing
hither and thither, some carrying lighted torchesтАФferrets, weasels and stoats.
One of them called out to Splitnose, "Hoi, Split-tie, any sign of the fox out
there?"

The stoat shook his head. "What, you mean the healer? No, not a whisker. We
caught a mouse, though. Look at this thing he was carrying."

Splitnose waved Martin's rusted sword aloft. Blacktooth ducked. "Stop playing
with that thing, you'll slash somebody twirling it around like that. So,
they're waiting on the fox again, eh. Old Greeneyes doesn't seem to be getting
any better lately. Hey, you there, keep those ropes tight! Hold him still, you
blockheads."

The entrance hall door proved doubly difficult as the warrior mouse managed to
cling to one of the timber doorposts. The soldiers had practically to pry him
loose with their spears. The weasel who had been given charge of the bread
kept well out of it, heading directly for the storeroom and larder. As he
passed through the entrance hall, he was challenged by others who cast
covetous eyes upon the brown home-baked loaves. It had been a hard winter,
since many creatures had deserted the settlement around Kotir after the early
autumn harvest, taking with them as much produce as they could carry to the
woodlands. There was not a great deal of toll or levy coming in. The weasel
clutched the bread close as he padded along.

The hall was hostile and damp, with wooden shutters across the low windows.
The floor was made from a dark granite-like rock, very cold to the paws. Here
and there the nighttime

12

guards had lit small fires in corners, which stained the walls black with
smoke and ashes. Only captains were allowed to wear long cloaks as a mark of
rank, but several soldiers had draped themselves in old sacks and blankets
purloined from the settlement. The stairs down to the lower levels were a
jumble of worn spirals and flights of straight stone steps in no particular
sequence. Half the wall torches had burned away and not been replaced, leaving
large areas of stairs dark and dangerous. Moss and fungus grew on most of the