"Stan Nicholls - Orcs First Blood 02 - Legion Of Thunder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nicholls Stan)

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Death moved sinuously through the water.
Grim purpose set her face like stone. She dived deep, impelling herself with powerful strokes from splayed, webbed
hands. Her ebony hair flowed free, an inky squid cloud billowing in her wake. Tiny threads of bubbles streamed from
her palpitating gills.
She looked back. Her nyadd raiding swarm, massed ranks swim-ming in formation, was wreathed in an eerie green glow
from the phosphorescent brands they carried to light their way. They held jagged-edged coral pikes. Bowed
adamantine daggers were sheathed in reed halters criss-crossing their scaly chests.
The murk started to clear, allowing glimpses of the sandy ocean floor, peppered with jutting rocks and swaying foliage.
Soon the begin-nings of a reef came into view, white and craggy, smothered with purple-tinged fungus. She swept
over it, her warriors in tow. They followed the reef's outline, moving fast just above its surface, and this close the
corruption was plain to see. Diseased vegetation, and the scar-city of fish, bore witness to the creeping taint. Scraps of
dead things floated past, and the unseasonable cold, near freezing the water, was greater at such a depth.
She lifted a hand as they sighted their goal. The troopers let go of the radiant brands, showering the seabed with an
emerald cascade. Then they glided in to gather around her.
Ahead of them, where the reef's spine widened, was a stony bluff, riddled with hollows and caves, both natural and
artificial. From this distance there was no sign of occupants. She signalled her orders. A dozen warriors separated and
made for the enemy cluster, low and stealthy. The rest, with her leading, slowly brought up the rear.
As they neared the redoubt they spotted their first merz, a scattered handful of sentries, ignorant of the approaching
advance party. She re-garded them with loathing. Their resemblance to humans was only partial, yet she was
disgusted by it. To her mind, this, as much as any dispute over territory or food supplies, justified making war. Halting
the column, she watched as her scouts moved in.
Two or three warriors targeted each guard. The one closest was male. His bearing was careless, and it seemed he was
mindful only of the odd predator rather than the threat of a sneak attack. He drifted, half turning, and confirmed her
repugnance.
The merzmale's upper body and head were much like a human's, except for razor thin gills on either side of its torso.
Compared to a human, its nose was more broad and flattened, and the eyes were covered with a filmy membrane. There
was no hair on the creature's chest or arms. But it did sport a head of rust-coloured locks and a short curly beard.
Below the waist it differed radically from the human form and was closer in appearance to the nyadds. Here the milky
flesh gave way to shiny overlapping scales covering a long, slender tail that ended in a large, fan-shaped fin.
The merz was armed with its race's traditional weapon, a spear-length three-pronged trident with arrowhead points.
Two warriors closed in on him. They advanced from the back and side, exploiting the sentry's blind spots, swimming at
speed. The merzmale stood little chance. Levelling its barbed pike, the nyadd from the right struck hard, piercing the
merz just above his waistline. The shallow blow wasn't fatal, but it served as a painful distraction. As the aston-ished
merz turned to face his attacker, the second nyadd arrived at his back. He held a sawtoothed dagger. Snaking his hand
around the en-emy's neck, he slashed the merz's throat.
The sentry thrashed wildly for a moment, a crimson cloud billowing from the gaping wound. Then his lifeless body
began sinking toward the seabed, trailing red streamers like scarlet ribbons.
Holding back with the main force, she looked on as her forward scouts tackled the rest of the guards.
Similarly taken unawares, a merz was being held by one nyadd as another used a dagger to puncture his chest. A
female of the species, a merzmaid, spiralled to the bottom with a spear jutting from between her bare breasts. She fell
silently mouthing her pain. Lashing out in panic, a merzmale swiped at a nyadd with his knife, forgetting that jabbing is
more effective than slashing movements underwater. He paid for the lapse with a pike thrust to his innards.
Swiftly, brutally, the sentinels were efficiently murdered. When the last was overcome, the killers signed word to her
through water tinted with a pink haze.
It was time to deploy the entire swarm. At her direction they ad-vanced, filling their hands with weapons and
spreading out. The silence was total. All that moved apart from the nyadd warriors was the guards' floating corpses.
The force had almost reached its goal when there was a flurry of activity at the honeycombed stronghold. Suddenly
the edifice disgorged a horde of heavily armed merz. They made a strange sound as they poured out, a high-pitched
oscillating wail that served as their language, a noise made more bizarre as it was distorted by travelling throughwater.