"Paul Kidd - Queen of the Demonweb Pits" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kidd Paul)

action, an intensity that became a drug, intoxicating and addictive.

Of all the war band leaders, the most savage, the most daring, was ReccaтАФswordmaster and last lord of
the grass elves. He had taught the art of the blade for three hundred years, taking only the most
dedicated, most cunning, and most perfect students. His blade struck faster than thought, and he moved
through a fight as if it were a dance. His sword, jet black with a wolf skull pommel, was sharp enough to
carve a war-horse in two.

As Iuz's war ground to an end, Recca had eleven followers remainingтАФrangers and battle-mages
hardened in this thankless war. He also had a single student, an apprentice as unlike him as iron was to
silk: brooding, massive, humorless, a man who no longer had a name.

Recca was charismatic, a cavalier, dapper and sly, cunning and adored. He had taken on this apprentice
because the boy looked like he had the devotion to listen and learn. Recca had taught the boy to fight, to
track, to hunt, and above all to think. They had been companions through many long, silent missionsтАФ
teacher and student, leader and learner. The apprentices devotion was based on a strange sense of honor
that he cherished deep inside his soul. Recca despaired of ever teaching the boy proper practicality.

Master and apprentice lay in the heather, side by side. Recca's armor, though bearing scrapes and
scratches from many battles, still had a worn flamboyance about it, and his steel helmet was fashioned
like a screaming eagle. Next to his master, the apprentice was in gear rugged, tested, and unadorned.
Where Recca was thin and rakishly handsome with amber eyes and golden hair as soft as silk, his
apprentice, almost invisible in the weeds beside him, was huge and unappealing. When they'd first met,
Recca had thought the boy too big and too powerful to move in stealth, yet the human was always
somehow silent as a cat. No, not a cat, a bearтАФdark, terrifying, and immense.

The war had taught the boy failure, hate, and emptiness. He had a stark brilliance with the sword, which
Recca found annoying. No flamboyance, no styleтАФmerely a brutal, unforgiving efficiency. Recca's
reputation had been founded on his brilliance, his merciless speed, and his raffish charisma. But in dark
times, men looked to tireless, efficient men for comfort. Men like Recca's apprentice.

With the turning of the war, decent targets had become fewer and fewer. The only troops of Iuz to be
seen were armies in retreat, and the small band of freedom fighters could do little but harry their scouts.

But here, all of a sudden, a mistake had been made. A general was bringing troops to build field
fortifications. Besides the general, there would be officers and officialsтАФand they were guarded only by
shambling, rotting zombies armed with shovels and stakes. There were no abyssal bats, no demons. A
general of Iuz would fall, the greatest coup achieved by any band through the entire war. Recca's
reputation would be immortalized.

The war was ending, and it was time to look to the future. A new generation would be searching for
heroesтАФfor kings. As the hero of the resistance, Recca's name would ring upon a hundred thousand
tonguesтАж

Recca thought the new attack would be easy, but his apprentice failed to agree. The big human studied
the scattered parties of zombies digging ditches and hauling rocks. He looked at the general's tents and
the few guards set on hills and ridgelines, and he drew back into cover.

"Withdraw." His voice was bassтАФquiet, grim, definite. "It's a trap."