"J. V. Jones - Sword of Shadows 2 - A Fortress of Grey Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones J. V)

I give the word.тАЭ

Placing the empty bucket down on the blue mud of the pipe floor, Crope watched the rock wall as it
continued to crack and pop. The fire set by the free miners heated the rock, making it split and break.
Water hauled up from theDrownedLakecooled the walls so quickly, boulders the size of war carts
shattered to dust. тАЬSoftening,тАЭ the free miners called it, making the pipe ready for the diggersтАЩ picks.
Crope could see nothing soft about it. Mannie Dun had broken his back pickaxing a seam last spring.
Crope remembered carrying the old digger away. MannieтАЩs legs jerked against his belly as thewasnтАЩt for
safetyтАЩs sake; Crope didnтАЩt know much but he knew that. The sealing was to keep the diggers away.
Before MannieтАЩs spine had twisted and popped, the tip of his ax had lodged in a rock wall speckled with
flecks of red stone. Red Eyes, the miners called them. Red Eyes meant diamonds. ..and diamonds were
the business of free men, not slaves.

тАЬPick to the wall, giant man. DonтАЩt go giving me good reason to spread my whip.тАЭ

Crope knew better than to look at the man who spoke. The guards in the pipe were known as Bull
Hands,on account of their oiled and flame-hardened whips. Scurvy said they could take the hands off a
man before he even heard the sound of bullhide moving through air. Crope dreamed of that sometimes;
of hands not attached to any living man, clutching his neck and face.

Diamond rock split and crumbled to nothing as Crope took his pick to the wall. Water still warm from
contact with the heated stone ran through the cracks at his feet. Above, the pipe twisted up and up, its
walls gashed by stairs and pathways hewn from the live rock. Tunnels and caves pitted the sides, marking
seams long run dry or walls overmined to collapse. The entrances to the older tunnelshad been plugged
with a makeshift mortar of horsehair and clay, for there were some in the pipe who feared shadow things
rising from the depths.

Rope bridges spanned the pipeтАЩs breadth, their wooden treads warped by steam, their fibers ticking as
the wind moved a thousand feet above. The sky seemed far away, and the sun farther still. Even on a
clear day in midwinter, little light found its way into the pipe.

Down below, in the lower tier of the pipe, where a ring of pitch lamps burned with white-hot flames,
the hags were at work with their baskets and claws.Scratch, scratch, scratch, as they raked the
new-broke ground for the hard clear stone that was valued above gold. The hags were slaves too, but
they were old and weak, bent-backed and stiff-fingered, and the Bull Hands did not fear to let them near
the lode.

Crope thought he spiedHadda the Crone, in line with the other clawed and sorted. Haddascared
Crope. She had long, sunken breasts shaped like spades that she bared to any digger who looked her
way. Scurvy, Bitterbean and the rest looked her way often, but Crope did not likeHadda , and he would
not look at her breasts.

When the lashcame he was half expecting it. The sting was cold,cold, and it took the breath from him
like a punch to the gut. The tip of the whip curled around his ear, licking flesh hard with scars. Tears of
blood welled in a line around his neck, and he felt their hot-ness trickle down his shoulders to his back.
The salt burn would come later, when the gray crystals of sea salt that the Bull Hands soaked into their
whips worked their way into the wound.

тАЬItтАЩs not enough that they whip us,тАЭ Scurvy always said. тАЬThey have to make us burn.тАЭ
 тАЬI can smell you, giant man.тАЭ The Bull Hand pulled back the whip with practiced slowness, drawing