"Brian Jacques - Redwall 08 - The Outcast Of Redwall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacques Brian)

hunched over a small fire, massaging his damaged paw. From shoulder to elbow
the limb was as strong as ever, but the six-clawed paw was rigid and unmoving.
It ached every morning, reminding him of the winter night when the young
badger smashed it with a piece of hornbeam. Nightshade approached with three
others who had been out searching for the missing warriors. Swam quickly
pulled a gauntlet onto his dead paw. It was a heavy affair, meshed brass mail,
with two weighty copper fasteners, and it made a very formidable weapon. He
glanced up at the vixen and snarled, "Well, didyer find 'em?"

Nightshade squatted down on the other side of the fire. "Aye, both sitting up
against a sycamore in a copse over yonder, stone dead, each holding one of
these." She tossed over two long-stemmed water plants.

Swartt picked them up and inspected them. "Bulrushes?" he said.

Nightshade was a healer, and she knew every plant by name. "That's right,
bulrushes. They are also called reed mace, or just mace in some parts of the
country."

Swartt Sixciaw flung them on the fire and watched them smolder. "Mace! It
doesn't take a genius to work out who did this."

The vixen narrowed her eyes against the smoke of the fire, saying, "You should
have caught him and slain him the night he escaped."

Swartt leapt up. Drawing his sword, he scattered the fire and shouted, "Should
have! Might have! Would have! That's in the past! Get those idlers up off
their tails, we travel east!"

The vixen sprang aside to avoid the burning embers. ' 'East? But my scouts
tell me Sunflash still travels south by west. What is there in the east?"

"Bowfleg!"

Nightshade raised her eyebrows questioningly. "Bowfleg the Warlord?"
Swartt thrust the sword back through his belt, sneering, "Bowfleg the Warlord,
hah! You mean Bowfleg the Old, Bowfleg the Fat, Bowfleg the Glutton!"

Nightshade shrugged. "Still, he leads a great horde." Swartt chuckled evilly
as he marched off. "Not for long!"

Outcast of Reduxdl

21

The far northwest fringes of Mossflower Woods are broken by rocky outcrops,
gullies, and hills. One could wonder why creatures bothered living there when
the woodlands farther inward were so lush and bounteous. But home is home, and
often creatures do not like to move away from the familiar surroundings of
their birthplaces. So it was with the hedgehog family of Tiny Lingl and the