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

`Aye. I live. Why do you hate me?Y
'All Nhadragh hate the Vadhagh. They have hated them through eternity! Why are you not dead? Have you been hiding?'
`I am not from Castle Gal.M
'So I was right. This was not the last Vadhagh castle.' The being tried to stir, tried to draw his knife, but he was too weak. He fell back.
`Hatred was not what the Nhadragh had once,' Corum said. 'You wanted our lands, yes. But you fought us without this hatred, and wc fought you without it. You

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have learned hatred from the Mabden, Nhadragh, not from your ancestors. They knew honour. You did not. How could one of the older races make himself a Mabden slave?'
The Nhadragh's lips smiled slightly. `All the Nhadragh that remain are Mabden slaves and have been for two hundred years. They only suffer us to live in order to use us like dogs, to sniff out those beings they call Shefanhow. We swore oaths of loyalty to them in order to continue living.'
`But could you not escape? There are other planes.'
'The other planes were denied to us. Our historians had it that the last great battle of the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh so disrupted the equilibrium of those planes that they were closed to us by the Gods. . .'
`So you have relearnt superstition, too,' mused Corum. 'Ah, what do these Mabden do to us?'
The Nhadragh began to laugh and the laugh turned into a cough and blood came out of his mouth and poured down his chin. As Corum wiped away the blood, he said: `They supersede us, Vadhagh. They bring the darkness and they bring the terror. They are the bane of beauty and the doom of truth. The world is Mabden now. We have no right to continue existing. Nature abhors us. We should not be here!'
Corum sighed. `Is that your thinking, or theirs?'
`It is a fact.'
Corum shrugged. `Perhaps.'
`It is a fact, Vadhagh. You would be mad if you denied it.'
,You said you thought this the last of our castles. . .'
`Not I. I sensed there was another one. I told them.'
`And they have gone to seek it?7
'Yes.'
Corum gripped the being's shoulder. 'Where?'
40 The Knight of the Swords

The Nhadragh smiled. 'Where? Where else but in the West?'
Corum rar to his horse.
Stay!' croaked the Nhadragh. Slay me, I pray you, Vadhaghl Do not let me linger!'
`I do not know how to kill,' Corum replied as he mounted the horse.
`Then you must learn, Vadhagh. You must learn!' rasped the dying being as Corum frantically forced his horse to gallop down the hill.

CHAPTER FIVE

A Lesson Learned

And here was Castle Erorn, her tinted towers entwined with greedy fires. And still the surf boomed in the great black caverns within the headland on which Erorn was raised and it seemed that the sea protested, that the wind wailed its anger, that the lashing foam sought desperately to drench the victorious flame.
Castle Erorn shuddered as she perished and the bearded Mabden laughed at her downfall, shaking the brass and gold trappings of their chariots, casting triumphant glances at the little row of corpses lying in a semi-circle before them.
They were Vadhagh corpses.
Four women and eight men.
In the shadows -on the far side of the natural bridge of rock that led to the headland, Corum saw glimpses of the bloody faces and he knew them all: Prince Khlonskey, his father. Colatalarna, his mother. His twin sisters, Ilastru

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and Pholhinra. His uncle, Prince Rhanan. Sertreda, his cousin. And the five retainers, all second and third cousins.
Three times Corum counted the corpses as the cold grief transformed itself to fury and he heard the butchers yell to one another in their coarse dialect.
Three times he counted, and then he looked at them and his face really was the face of a Shefanhow.
Prince Corum had discovered sorrow and he had discovered fear. Now he discovered rage.
For two weeks he had ridden almost without pause, hoping to get ahead of the Denledhyssi and warn his family of the barbarians' coming. And he had arrived a few hours too late.
The Mabden had ridden out in their arrogance boro of ignorance and destroyed those whose arrogance was borr of wisdom. It was the way of things. Doubtless Corum's father, Prince Khlonskey, had thought as much as he was hacked down with a stolen Vadhagh war-axe. But now Corum could find no such philosophy within his own heart.
His eyes turred black with anger, save for the irises, which turred bright gold, and he drew his tall spear and urged his weary horse over the causeway, through the flamelit night, towards the Denledhyssi.