"Paul Kearney - Monarchies of God 4 - The Second Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kearney Paul)

falconets. They were roughly cast, and their edges had scored his flesh into bloody meat at the wrists and
ankles, but every time he shifted in and out of beast form, the wounds healed somewhat. It was an
interminable form of torture, Hawkwood knew, but there was no other way to secure the wolf when it
returned.

тАЬIтАЩm sorry, Bardolin . . . Has he been back?тАЭ

тАЬYes. He appears in the night-watches and sits where you are now. He says I am hisтАФI will be his right
hand one day. And Hawkwood, I find myself listening to him, believing him.тАЭ

тАЬFight it. DonтАЩt forget who you are. DonтАЩt let the bastard win.тАЭ

тАЬHow much longer? How far is there to go?тАЭ

тАЬNot so far now. Another week or ten days perhaps. Less if the wind backs. This is only a passing
squallтАФitтАЩll soon blow itself out.тАЭ

тАЬI donтАЩt know if I can survive. It eats into my mind like a maggot. . . stay back, it comes again. Oh sweet
Lord GodтАФтАЭ

Bardolin screamed, and his body bucked and thrashed against the chains which held him down. His face
seemed to explode outwards. The scream turned into an animal roar of rage and pain. As Hawkwood
watched, horrified, his body bent and grew and cracked sickeningly. His skin sprouted fur and two
horn-like ears thrust up from his skull. The wolf had returned. It howled in anguish and wrenched at its
confining chains. Hawkwood backed away, shaken.

тАЬKill meтАФkill me and give me peace!тАЭ the wolf shrieked, and then the words dissolved into a manic
bellowing. Hawkwood retrieved the storm-lantern and retreated through the muck of the bilge, leaving
Bardolin alone to fight the battle for his soul in the darkness of the shipтАЩs belly.

What God would allow the practise of such abominations upon the world he had made? What manner of
man would inflict them upon another?

Unwillingly, his mind was drawn back to that terrible place of sorcery and slaughter and emerald jungle.
The Western Continent. They had sought to claim a new world there, and had ended up fleeing for their
lives. He could remember every stifling, terror-ridden hour of it. In the wave-racked carcase of his
once-proud ship, he had it thrust vivid and unforgettable into his mindтАЩs eye once again.

PART ONE
RETURN OF THE MARINER
ONE
T HEY had stumbled a mile, perhaps two, from the ashladen air on the slopes of Undabane. Then they
collapsed in on each other like a childтАЩs house of playing cards, what remained of their spirit spent. Their
chests seemed somehow too narrow to take in the thick humidity of the air around them. They lay
sprawled in the twilit ooze of the jungle floor while half-glimpsed animals and birds hooted and shrieked
in the trees above, the very land itself mocking their failure. Heaving for a breath, the sweat running down
their faces and the insects a cloud before their eyes.

It was Hawkwood who recovered first. He was not injured, unlike Murad, and his wits had not been
addled, unlike BardolinтАЩs. He sat himself up in the stinking humus and the creeping parasitic life which