"Tim Lebbon - Dusk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lebbon Tim)

Well, he still lived in Trengborne, or he had until hours ago. A nothing village, a poor farmersтАЩ
settlement inhabited by simple folk out to make their living day to day, hour to hour. A place where his
future promised little more than scratching a living in the dirt, celebrating when a new calf was born,
getting drunk on the autumn windfalls, marrying a village girl and raising children to run through the
same ageless scenario . . .


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Tim%20Lebbon%20-%20Dusk.html (12 of 337)10-8-2007 12:02:26
 Dusk


Except that things had changed.

Not only now, when a change was thrust cruelly and bloodily upon him. But before, days and weeks
ago, a hint that something was occurring in his mind over which he held no real control. Something
involving words he could not understand, themes and ideas that should be painting a picture for him but
which, in reality, were merely keeping him awake. Yet they formed a concerto of change in his mind,
unleashing his hobbled imagination. However terrible things now were, this journey seemed right.
Meant to be. His parents were dead and there was a black pit of mourning opening up inside of him, but
things were going the way that was intended. He was certain of it. From the day he had first heard those
voices, he had known that he was destined for more than a life of farming.

There was a noise behind him.

Rafe crouched down low, spun on his heels and rested a hand on the hilt of his knife. He caught his
breath, wished he could still his heart to hear better.

The noise again, a scattering of tiny pebbles and loose stones slipping down the incline as someone or
something made their way down from above. He concentrated in the dark, sweeping his head left and
right in the hope that he would pick out something from the corner of his eye. The life moon revealed
nothing. Whatever was up there knew he was looking and had hunkered down into another shadow.

But Rafe knew what it was. A demon, bleeding and moaning and coming for him on legs pierced by
arrows and bolts. A man eager to complete the work he had so recently begun. The man in red,
somehow still alive, colorless in the moonlight.

Rafe turned and slipped and went sliding down a patch of slick grass. He cried out, and there was
another rattle of stones from above. He struggled to find his feet and slid down the hillside, digging his
hands into the loamy ground and feeling his fingers slice through. He struck a rock. It opened a gash on
his cheek and spilled warm blood across his face, but Rafe was glad. It made him feel alive. The pain
invigorated him and drove him to his feet. Soon he was scampering down the hill, dodging rocks
looming darkly from the night, hands held out to either side to afford him some balance and break his
fall should he slip again.

He did not look back. To look back would be to invite the wrath of the thing pursuing him, give it an
opportunity to hack and slice its way through his defense of pain and panic, cleave him in two from head
to foot and let his insides cool here in the hills until the scavengers came. Instead he concentrated on the
glittering spread of Pavisse, tinted silver by the life moon. And before long he was running like a
mountain goat, leaping from hump to hump, missing the gullies in between that would bend and snap his
legs, avoiding the rocks, their sharp edges promising to finish what the man in red had begun.