"Jean Lorrah - Savage Empire 04 - Flight To the Savage Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lorrah Jean)

was at hand.

The ending could not come soon enough for Ma-gister Astra. She was not in the stands, but huddled in
the small medical treatment room beneath them, waiting for one gladiator or the other to be carried in
with a grave or fatal wound. Here, for the eighth time today, she would either work frantically to save a
lifeтАж or administer opiates to ease the last moments of a dying man.

In either case, she thought bitterly, the punishment and pain are mine.

For the hundredth time that day, the young woman wished she were anywhere else in the Aventine
EmpireтАФsomeplace without pain, suffering, or violence. But she could not escape her duty, any more
than she could escape her Reader's talents.

No matter how hard she tried, she could not fully shut out the emotions of the people in the arena. They
reeked with bloodlust, enjoying the matchтАФ she struggled not to be swept up in their fervor.

But worse than that, her inner vision put her in the very center of the life-and-death battle.

She tried to focus her powers away from the carnage, searching for something to concentrate on as the
last match of the season ground to a close. This matchтАФthe main bout for which everyone had waited
eagerlyтАФwas likely to end in death, not just injury. If she could find something to hold her full attention
for a minute or two, perhaps she wouldn't feel the deathblow so sharply.

There. On the near sidelines, one man's thoughts stood out from the others'. Calm, rational, he shouted
instructions to one of the gladiators. "Careful, Cla-viusтАФdon't get careless! Keep your guard up!"

Of courseтАФhe was coaching Clavius, the soon-to-be victor.

Astra Read the man's exterior, and found herself "looking" at a tall, well-muscled man built like a
gladiator himself. His rough-hewn face was crowned by tousled red hair. A slave from the northern isles.

No, she corrected herself as she looked further, he's too well dressed for a slave. He must be a
freedmanтАж probably Clavius' owner as well as his coach.

Suddenly her attention was torn from the red-haired man by a strange mental outcryтАФpuzzlement mixed
with fear. Involuntarily her focus changed to the center of the arena. Metrius lay sprawled on his left side,
still losing blood, barely able to raise his sword. But the cry hadn't come from him.

It was Claviusl

He was trying to raise his sword to deliver the deathblow, but his muscles wouldn't respond!

He started to shake, not in fear, but in convulsions. His mind again cried out for helpтАФthen screamed as

Metrius, with his last strength, drove his sword up from the ground, piercing beneath the rib cage and into
Clavius' heart.

The Reader screamed in empathic pain as she withdrew her mind from the scene, clutching her chest.
She had felt her own heart stop for a moment, but now it beat all too rapidly.