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

RAFE BABURN SAT huddled on the hillside and stared down at the ruin of his life.

He was shivering, though it was still warm. Sweat beaded his skin, and the setting sun was still strong
enough to bake his scalp, yet he shook and shuddered like a sheebok pulled from a mountain stream. He
tried to cry out but his voice had gone, eaten away by shock. His memory too, slaughtered as surely as
those children on the bridge, the militia outside the whorehouse. And his parents.

His father, probably still clasping the rusty old crossbow heтАЩd not had the chance to fire.

His mother . . .

But no, he would not think of that. He could not. He must think of something else, turn from the village
and stare at a rock, wonder what it had seen in its long life, explore underneath to see if there were any
secrets hiddenтАФ


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Tim%20Lebbon%20-%20Dusk.html (9 of 337)10-8-2007 12:02:26
 Dusk


She had run to his father where he lay bleeding on the stilted platform in front of their home. He was
dead already, Rafe knew, but still his mother went to him, perhaps thinking that her love could mend all
wounds. The sword whispered through the air and sang a song of violence as it buried itself in her chest.
She fell with the sword still in her, and the killer, the murdering bastard, placed his red-booted foot on
her breasts to lever the blade from bone and flesh.

Rafe had wanted to close his eyes. Hiding beneath the platform, dust showered down over his face. His
fatherтАЩs blood had already pattered onto his forehead and dripped into one eye, and now his motherтАЩs
blood was adding to it, urging him to drift away, forget what he had seen and never dream of it again.
The blood was as warm as his parentsтАЩ hands on his forehead when he was having nightmares as a child.
Or his fatherтАЩs fingertips, massaging RafeтАЩs tense scalp when he had so recently woken from strange
dreams, unknown voices still muttering inside his head.

But he had not been able to look away. He was afraid that if he closed his eyes, then the man in redтАФ
clicking and clacking as the arrows piercing his body knocked togetherтАФwould find him. The murderer
paused, standing with a foot at either side of RafeтАЩs dead mother, staring into the house. Rafe heard a
sniff as he tested the air. He seemed undecided, unsure of whether or not to venture into the house or
move on to the next. His decision was made for him when two screaming men charged onto the
platform, attacking him with rusty swords.

The man had swatted them aside and opened them up as they fell to the ground. Several arrows
whispered through the air and thudded into his chest and arms, and he left the platform to pursue the
shooters.

Rafe had waited for a little while, terrified to move, listening to the sound of death around him. It shifted
across the village, tagged onto the red-robed man like his own shadow and, when Rafe judged it to be
sufficiently distant, he ran.

He had tried not to look at his parents. He could smell them as he scrambled from beneath the wooden
platform and he could hear the drip, drip of blood as it ran between the boards. He did not want to see