"Michael Moorcock - Corum 1 - The Knight Of The Swords" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

Save for dead fires and some utter, Prince Corum saw no further signs of Mabden before he breasted the high green hills that enclosed Valley Crachah and searched with his eyes for the castle of Princess Lorim.
The valley was full of poplars, elms and birch and looked peaceful in the gentle light of the early afternoori But where was the castle, he wondered.
Corum drew his map again from within his byrnie and consulted it. The castle should be almost in the centre of the valley, surrounded by six rings of poplars and two outer rings of elms. He boked again.
Yes, there were the rings of poplars and elms. And near the centre, no castle, just a cloud of mist.
But there should be no mist on such a day. It could only be smoke.
Prince Corum rode rapidly down the hill.
He rode until he reached the first of the rings of trees and he peered through the other rings but could, as yet, see nothing. He sniffed the smoke.
He passed through more rings of trees and now the smoke stung his eyes and throat and he could see a few t,iack shapes in it.
He passed through the final ring of poplars and he began
choke as the smoke filled his lungs and his watering eyes roade out the shapes. Sharp crags, tumbled rocks, blistered metal, burned beams.
Prince Corum saw a ruin. It was without a doubt the ruin of Castle Crachah. A smouldering ruin. Fire had
32 The Knight of the Swords

brought Castle Crachah down. Fire had eaten her folk, for now Corum, as lic rode his snorting horse around the perimeter of the ruins, made out blackened skeletons. And beyond the ruins were signs of battle. A broken Mabden chariot. Some Mabden corpses. An old Vadhagh woman, chopped into several pieces.
Even now the crows and the ravens were beginning to sidle in, risking the smoke.
Prince Corum began to understand what sorrow must be. He thought that the emotion he felt was that.
He called out once, in the hope that some inhabitant of Castle Crachah lived, but there was no reply. Slowly, Prince Corum turned away.
He rode towards the East. Towards Castle Sarn.
He rode steadily for a week and the sense of sorrow remained but was joined by another nagging emotion. Prince Corum began to think it must be a feeling of trepidation.

Castle Sam lay in the middle of a dense elder forest and was reached by a pathway down which the weary Prince in the Scarlet Robe and his weary horse moved. Small animals scampered away from them and a thin rain fell from a brooding sky. No smoke rose here. And when Corum came to the castle be saw that it was no longer burning. Its black stones were cold and the crows and ravens had already picked the corpses clean and gone away in search of other carrion.
And then tears came to Corum's eyes for the first time and he dismounted from his dusty horse and clambered over the stones and the bones and sat down and looked about him.
For several hours Prince Corum sat thus until a sound came from his throat. It was a sound he had not heard before and he could not name it. It was a thin sound that

Book one 33

could not express what was within his stunned mind. He had never known Prince Opash, though his father bad spoken of him with great affection. He had never known the family and retainers who had dwelt in Castle Sam. But he wept for them until at length, exhausted, be stretched out upon the broken slab of stone and fell into a gloomy slumber.
The rain continued to fall on Corum's scarlet coat. It fell on the ruins and it washed the bones. The red horse sought the shelter of the elder trees and lay down. For a while it chewed the grass and watched its prone master. Then it, too, slept.
When he eventually awoke and clambered back over the ruins to where his horse still lay, Corum's mind was mcapable of speculation. He knew now that this destrucнtion must be Mabden work, for it was not the custom of the Nhadragh to burn the castles of their enemies. Besides, the Nhadragh and the Vadhagh bad been at peace for xnturies. Both had forgotten how to make war.
It bad occurred to Corum that the Mabden might have beeen inspired to their destruction by the Nhadragh, but elen this was unlikely. There was an ancient code of war o which both races had, no matter how fierce the fighting, .lw ays adhered. And with the decline in their numbers, mere had been no need for the Nhadragh to expand their :erritories or for the Vadhagh to defend theirs.
His face thin with weariness and strain, coated with dust rnd streaked with tears, Prince Corum aroused his horse and mounted him, riding on towards the North, where Castle Gal lay. He hoped a little. He hoped that the Mabden herds moved only in the South and East, that the '_'": orth would still be free of their encroachments, as the West was.
A day later, as he stopped to water his horse at a small l~uke, he looked across the gorse moor and saw more smoke
34 The Knight of the Swords

curling. He took out his map and consulted it. No castle was marked there.
He hesitated. Was the smoke coming from another Mabden camp? If so, they might have Vadhagh prisoners whom Corum should attempt to rescue. He decided to ride towards the source of the smoke.

The smoke came from several sources. This was, indeed, a Mabden camp, but it was a permanent camp, -not unlike the smaller settlements of the Nhadragh, though much cruder. A collection of stone huts built close to the ground, with thatched roofs and chimneys of slate from which the smoke came.
Around this camp were fields that bad evidently contained crops, though there were no crops now, and others which had a few cows grazing in them.
For some reason Corum did not feel wary of this camp as be had felt wary of the Mabden caravan, but he none the less approached it cautiously, stopping his horse a hundred yards away and studying the camp for signs of life.
He waited an hour and saw none.
He moved his horse in closer until he was less than fifty yards away from the nearest single-storey building.
Still no Mabden emerged from any of the low doorways.
Corum cleared his throat.
A child began to scream and the scream was muffled suddenly.
`Mabden!' Corum called, and his voice was husky with weariness and sorrow. `I would speak with you. Why do you not come out of your dens?'
From the nearby hovel a voice replied. The voice was a mixture of fear and anger.
'We have done no harm to the Shefanhow. They have done no harm to us. But if we speak to you the