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

BOOK ONE

In which Prince Corum learns a lesson
and loses a limb

INTRODUCTION

In those days there were oceans of light and cities in the skies and wild flying beasts of bronze.
There were herds of crimson cattle that roared and were taller than castles. There were shrill,
viridian things that haunted bleak rivers. It was a time of gods, manifesting themselves upon our
world in all her aspects; a time of giants who walked on water; of mindless sprites and misshapen
creatures who could be summoned by an ill-considered thought but driven away only on pain of some
fearful sacrifice; of magics, phantasms, unstable nature, impossible events, insane paradoxes,
dreams come true, dreams gone awry, of nightmares assuming reality.
It was a rich time and a dark time. The time of the Sword Rulers. The time when the Vadhagh and
the Nhadragh, age-old enemies, were dying. The time when Man, the slave of fear, was emerging,
unaware that much of the terror he experienced was the result of nothing else but the fact that
he, himself, had come into existence. It was one of many ironies connected with Man (who, in




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12 The Knight of the Swords

those days, called his race `Mabden').
The Mabden lived brief lives and bred prodigiously. Within a few centuries they rose to dominate
the westerly continent on which they had evolved. Superstition stopped them from sending many of
their ships towards Vadhagh and Nhadragh lands for another century or two, but gradually they
gained courage when no resistance was offered. They began to feel jealous of the older races; they
began to feel malicious.
The Vadhagh and the Nhadragh were not aware of this. They had dwelt a million or more years upon
the planet which now, at last, seemed at rest. They knew of the Mabden but considered them not
greatly different from other beasts. Though continuing to indulge their tradi-tional hatreds of
one another, the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh spent their long hours in considering abstrac-tions, in
the creation of works of art and the like. Rational, sophisticated, at one with themselves, these
older races were unable to believe in the changes that had come. Thus, as it almost always is,
they ignored the signs.
There was no exchange of knowledge between the two ancient enemies, even though they had fought
their last battle many centuries before.
The Vadhagh lived in family groups occupying isolated castles scattered across a continent called
by them Bro-an-Vadhagh. There was scarcely any communication between these families, for the
Vadhagh had long since lost the impulse to travel. The Nhadragh lived in their cities built on the
islands in the reas to the north west of Bro-an-Vadhagh. They, also, had little contact, even with
their closest kin. Both races reckoned themselves invulnerable. Both were wrong.
Upstart Man was beginning to breed and spread like a pestilence across the world. This pestilence
struck down the old races wherever it touched them. And it was not