"Mithgar - Hel's Crucible - 02 - Into The Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKiernan Dennis L)

Again Phais shook her head. "They are a terrible foe, but not even they could cause such ruin."

"Too," said Loric, "I feel not the dread of one."

Tip's mind flashed back to the time at Gunarring Gap when his heart had hammered with twisting apprehension from even a distant Gargon. No such anxiety writhed through his veins here.

"I see no movement," growled Bekki, looking at the others.

"Nor I," said Phais.

"What'll we do?" asked Beau. "Pass it by?"

Loric shook his head. "Nay. We must see what has befallen; others will want to know." Loric kicked his heels to the flanks of his mount, drawing his sword as he moved downslope.

And so did they all follow: Bekki with his hammer in hand, Phais with her blade, Beau with his bullet-laden sling, and Tip with an arrow strung.





They rode across the remains of crashed-down gates and into the rubble beyond, and hard-frozen bodies lay everywhere, yet some were burned as well. Too, not only were buildings smashed, but charred timbers and ash attested to raging fire.

And Phais and Loric looked at one another and nodded in unspoken agreement.

"What?" asked Beau.

"Drake," replied Phais.

The swirling air muttered among the wrack like whisper-ing wraiths on the wind, as through the devastation and toward the palace they rode, now following Bekki, thread ing their way among snow and ice and burned wreckag and the dead. But when they reached the site of the man sion they found nought but blackened corpses amid shal tered, charred ruins.

Beau looked about, shaking his head in disbelief, his eye wide and filled with distress.

"I wonderЧ" began TipЧ

Чbut Phais threw up a hand. "Hist!"

While the chill wind spun through splinter and burn am stone, Phais cocked her head this way and that, and thei she looked at Loric and gestured toward the river.

He nodded, and softly said, "I agree."

Bekki frowned. "I do not hearЧ"

"But they do," said Beau, canting his head toward the Elves.

"What is it?" breathed Tip.

"Laughter. Weeping," murmured Loric.

"Mounted or afoot?" asked Phais, gripping her sword.