"George R. R. Martin - Ice Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

its baleful empty eyes upon the enemy, and opened its frost-rimmed jaws. Out
from among its icy teeth its breath came streaming, and that breath was pale
and cold.
It touched the left wing of the coal-black dragon beneath them, and the
dark beast gave a shrill cry of pain, and when it beat its wings again, the
frost-covered wing broke in two. Dragon and dragonrider began to fall.
The ice dragon breathed again.
They were frozen and dead before they hit the ground.
The rust-colored dragon was flying at them, and the dragon the color of
blood with its barechested rider. Adara's ears were filled with their angry
roaring, and she could feel their hot breath around her, and see the air
shimmering with heat, and smell the stink of sulfur.
Two long swords of fire crossed in midair, but neither touched the ice
dragon, though it shriveled in the heat, and water flew from it like rain
whenever it beat its wings.
The blood-colored dragon flew too close, and the breath of the ice
dragon blasted the rider. His bare chest turned blue before Adara's eyes, and
moisture condensed on him in an instant, covering him with frost. He screamed,
and died, and fell from his mount, though his harness had remained behind,
frozen to the neck of his dragon. The ice dragon closed on it, wings screaming
the secret song of winter, and a blast of flame met a blast of cold. The ice
dragon shuddered once again, and twisted away, dripping. The other dragon
died.
But the last dragonrider was behind them now, the enemy in full armor
on the dragon whose scales were the brown of rust. Adara screamed, and even as
she did the fire enveloped the ice dragon's wing. It was gone in less than an
instant, but the wing was gone with it, melted, destroyed.
The ice dragon's remaining wing beat wildly to slow its plunge, but it
came to earth with an awful crash. Its legs shattered beneath it, and its wing
snapped in two places, and the impact of the landing threw Adara from its
back. She tumbled to the soft earth of the field, and rolled, and struggled
up, bruised but whole.
The ice dragon seemed very small now, and very broken. Its long neck
sank wearily to the ground, and its head rested amid the wheat.
The enemy dragonrider came swooping in, roaring with triumph. The
dragon's eyes burned. The man flourished his lance and shouted.
The ice dragon painfully raised its head once more, and made the only
sound that Adara ever heard it make: a terrible thin cry full of melancholy,
like the sound the north wind makes when it moves around the towers and
battlements of the white castle that stands empty in the land of
always-winter.
When the cry had faded, the ice dragon sent cold into the world one
final time: a long smoking blue-white stream of cold that was full of snow and
stillness and the end of all living things. The dragonrider flew right into
it, still brandishing whip and lance. Adara watched him crash.
Then she was running, away from the fields, back to the house and her
family within, running as fast as she could, running and panting and crying
all the while like a seven year old.
Her father had been nailed to the bedroom wall. They had wanted him to
watch while they took their turns with Teri. Adara did not know what to do,