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

If there were noises of pursuit he did not hear them. There was no need to be silent now, and breath was
punched from his lungs with every slap of his feet on the ground, every impact as he landed and sprang

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Tim%20Lebbon%20-%20Dusk.html (13 of 337)10-8-2007 12:02:26
 Dusk


onward. RafeтАЩs mind seemed to retreat as he ran, revealing nothing of the passage of time, the shifting of
night, nor the exhaustion he was forcing himself into. His body protected itself by driving him out of his
mind.

By the time he reached the stone wallsтАФthe first touches of humanity since leaving his dead villageтАФ
dawn had broken and spilled its glow along the valley. Rafe paused, hardly able to breathe, his heart
hammering, his legs ready to fold beneath him. For the first time in hours he looked back, became aware
once again. Shadows still hid beneath rocky overhangs higher up on the hillsides. He wondered what hid
within them.




ON THE WAY into Pavisse he passed by an old mine. Its throat was open to the air like a badly healed
wound, the land around it scarred blank by dust, horsesтАЩ hooves, and the feet of the workmen who had
lived and died hauling coal and fledge from the ground. To one side of the opening, overgrown and
decayed down over the centuries since it had died, stood a machine. Its gray flanks of stone were
supported by rusted veins of worked metal, and there were empty spaces where pieces of it had once
been.

A machine! Rafe had only ever seen small ones, as big as his head or torso, their forgotten purposes only
guessed at. But this one was huge, almost as large as the house he and his parents had lived in. Birds
nested in its upper portions, and a soft breeze whistled through its long-petrified guts. Rafe wondered
what its function had been, but the very idea of this massive, mysterious thing moving shocked and
astounded him. His parents had told him that these things had not worked since the War, but that they
had been here forever.

He passed the mine and approached Pavisse, and as he neared other peopleтАФand, he hoped, safetyтАФthe
effects of the night truly began to weigh him down.

His parentsтАЩ blood was a crisp across his face. His own, still dripping from the cut, had dried over it.

Sometime during the night he had also soiled himself.

Crying, trying to shout but far too tired to do so, mumbling about his dead village and inviting curious
stares from the waking population of Pavisse, Rafe entered the town to find his uncle.




Chapter 3