"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 02 - Saber and Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

And rain. The servants arrived as fear overbalanced fear. They found her
sitting unharmed amid the shattered glass and plants of the solarium; droplets
misted her hair and seeped into the cushions as she regarded the crushed and
smoldering remains of her surroundings. But for fortune and speed, they might
have found nothing but charred bone and greasy ash, or a body
probability-twisted into something that had no right to exist in
time-present-here. As it was . . .

"The lightning rod needs replacing," she said, before signaling her
bodyservant to carry her from the wreckage.

CHAPTER IV

The scream still echoed through the thunder-ridden night as the plainswoman
came out of her crouch and flowed smoothly erect. That was the room directly
next to hers, the one the outlander, Megan, had taken. The saber flickered
into her hand as she twisted past the bedpost; three long strides brought her
to the connecting door. Her dagger thudded into the wood beside the lock, and
she threw her weight levering against the hilt until the ironwood lock
mechanism broke from the softer oak with a rending crunch like the sound of
tearing cartilage that went with a crushed knee. She kicked flat-footed, then
dove forward into the outlander's room, the curved sword moving in a neat
precise arc, up into guard position.

Megan had flung herself onto the strange bed, staring at the ceiling. Naked in
the damp heat, she lay and listened to the storm, refusing to remember.
Denying, as she had every time a storm had brought those memories crowding
back. No, she refused to remember, she refused to feel that way ever again.
She concentrated on her breath, forcing it to even out into deep slow rhythms;
felt the sweat trickling down her flanks, the crisp texture of the close-woven
linen beneath her. A pond of still water grew before the eyes of her mind. She
slept. And dreamed, remembering.

The rough, prickly fiber of the rope dug painfully into her hands; that was
nothing, a welcome distraction from the tearing pain between her legs. She
leaned into the coil of rope, grateful for its support as she stared down into
the dark track behind the ship, black against the slush-white surface of the
freezing river. She was cold; the tears froze on her lashes. Blood trickled
warmly down her thighs, cooling. Thunder crashed to the north. Muffled now,
not close and overwhelming as it had when Samgeld had raped her.

She looked down at the water with longing as it curled and chuckled to itself
under the keel. Peace, and escape, and forgetting. A gloved hand speared down
from above and caught the oak chain at her neck as she leaned toward! the
water. She twisted away, choking, trying to scream as he lifted her to the
deck of the snip.

Shkai'ra scanned the room, instantly aware that there was no third presence.
She relaxed as much as was possible for one who had spent her childhood under