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

Turn and run, Kosar, you bloody fool!

Even though instinct urged him to flee, and good sense told him that deathтАЩs shadow was already closing
over the village, there were children here, playing in the stream. There were a few women in the village
that he liked, or would like to like, given the chance. And more than anything, Kosar was a good man. A
thief, a criminal, branded forever as untrustworthy and devious, but a good man.

The horseman was no more than two minutes away from the village. Kosar had almost reached the end
of the trench where it joined the stream, the bridge a hundred steps away. The children had finished their
fishing and playing and climbed the bank, and now they sat on the bridge parapet, swinging their legs
over the edge, laughing and joking and watching the stranger approach. Such trust, in a world where
hunger and fear made trust so precious.

He was about to call out to the children, when the horse broke into a gallop.

He could have warned them. He should have shouted at them to turn and run, go to their homes, tell their
parents to lock their doors. Kosar had seen enough trouble in his life to recognize its flowering, and he
had known from the instant heтАЩd laid eyes on the horseman that he was not here for a drink, a meal, a
bed for the night. He could have warned them, but shouting would have drawn attention to himself. And
in this case, instinct won out.

The man in red dismounted on the bridge and approached the children. His horse remained where it had
stopped, head bowed as if smelling the water through thick stone. The children stood, jumped around,
giggled. Kosar glanced across into the village and saw several people looking his way, a couple of them
striding quickly toward the bridge, one woman darting into the brothel where the three village militia
spent most of their time.

For a moment all was still. Kosar paused, unmoving. The breeze died down as if the land itself was

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 Dusk

holding its breath. Even the stream seemed to slow.

The man in red spoke. His voice was water running uphill, birds falling into the sky, sand eroding into
rock. Where is Rafe Baburn? he asked. The children glanced at one another. One of the girls offered a
nervous smile.

Later, Kosar would swear that the man never even gave them time to reply.

He grabbed the smiling girl by her long hair, pulled his hand from within the red robes and sliced her
throat. His knife seemed to lengthen into a sword, as if gorging on the fresh blood smearing its blade,
and he swung it through the air. Three other children clutched at fatal wounds, shrieking as they
disappeared from KosarтАЩs view below the parapet. The two remaining boys turned to run and the hooded
man caught them, seemingly without moving. He beheaded them both with a flick of his wrist.

Kosar fell to his knees, the breath sucked from him, and rolled sideways into the irrigation ditch. He
cringed at the splash, but the hooded man strode across the bridge and into the village without pause.
Kosar peered above the edge of the trench and watched through brown reeds as the man approached the
first building.