"Robert Jordan - Conan 02 - The Invincible" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

struck on silver gongs, and silken maids danced for the pleasure of the drunkard king. Now, in the purple
night, ivory towers with corbeled arches and golden-finialed domes pierced the sky in silent stillness.

Conan watched from the shadows around the plaza that surrounded the palace, counting the steps of
guards as they moved toward each other, then away. His boots and cloak were in the sack slung at his
side, muffling any clank of the tools of his trade. His sword was strapped across his back, the hilt rising
above his right shoulder, and the Karpashian dagger was sheathed on his left forearm. He held a rope of
black-dyed raw silk, on the end of which dangled a padded graponel.

As the guards before him met once more and turned to move apart, he broke from the shadows. His
bare feet made almost no sound on the gray paving stones of the plaza. He began to swing the graponel
as he ran. There would be little time before the guards reached the ends of their rounds and turned back.
He reached the foot of the pale wall, and a heave of his massive arm sent the graponel skyward into the
night. It caught with a muted elicit. Tugging once at the rope to test it, he swarmed up the wall as another
man might climb a stair.

Wriggling flat onto the top of the wall, he stared at the graponel and heaved a sigh of relief. One point
had barely caught the lip of the wall, and a scrape on the stone showed how it had slipped. A finger's
breadth more .... But he had no time for these reflections. Hurriedly he pulled the sable rope up, and
dropped into the garden below. He hit rolling, to absorb the fall, and came up in rustling bushes against
the wall.

Above, the guards came closer, their footsteps thudding on the stone. Conan held his breath. If they
noticed the scrape, an alarm would surely be raised. The guards came together, muttered words were
exchanged, and they began to move apart. He waited until the sounds of their going had faded, then he
was off, massive muscles working, in a loping stride past ferns that towered above his head and
pale-flowered vines that rustled where there was no breeze.

Across the garden a peacock called, like the plaintive cry of a woman. Conan cursed whoever had
wandered out to wake the bird from its roosting. Such noises were likely to draw the guards' attentions.
He redoubled his pace. There was need to be inside before anyone came to check.

Experience had taught him that the higher he was above a ground-level entrance, the more likely anyone
who saw him was to think he had a right there. If he were moving from a lower level to a higher, he might
be challenged, but from a higher to a lower, never. An observer thought him servant or bodyguard
returning from his master to his quarters below, and thought no more on it. It was thus his practice to
enter any building at as high a level as he could. Now, as he ran, his eyes searched the carven white
marble wall of the palace ahead, seeking those balconies that showed no light. Near the very roof of the
palace, a hundred feet and more above the garden, he found the darkened balcony he sought.

The pale marble of the palace wall had been worked in the form of leafy vines, providing a hundred grips
for fingers and toes. For one who had played on the cliffs of Cimmeria as a boy, it was as good as a
path. As he swung his leg over the marble balustrade of the balcony, the peacock cried again, and this
time its cry was cut off abruptly. Conan peered down to where the guardsmen made their rounds. Still
they seemed to notice nothing amiss. But it would be well to get the pendants in hand and be away as
quickly as possible. Whatever fool was wandering about and perhaps silencing peacocks-must surely
rouse the sentries given time.
He pushed quickly through the heavy damask curtains that screened the balcony and halfway across the
darkened room before he realized his mistake. He was not alone. Breath caught in a canopied,
gauze-hung bed, and someone stirred in the sheets.