"Andrew J. Offutt - Cormac 02 - The Tower of Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

The flat of a Frankish ax clouted him negligently on the side of the head, impelled him through the frame and
dropped him senseless a pace or two beyond it.
And Wulfhere killed another man, and Black Thorfinn the second that had fallen before him.
Cormac twisted lithely aside from a hurtling ax-edge, dropped to one knee beneath a second, and drove the
point he favoured over the edge under a leather tunic and deep into a Frankish groin. The man made a high
whistling shriek like a snared rabbit, and folded double on his way to the encrimsoned floor. WulfhereтАЩs ax
clanged and crashed, and there was company for NestorтАЩs severed head.
In bare moments, Sigebert had been left with three men standing. The smile had vanished from his mouth to
be succeeded by something like horror. He drew his sword from its gilded sheath.
Black Thorfinn met his weird then. With a raucous battle-cry in his teeth, he cut at Sigebert. A soldier
interposed his buckler. ThorfinnтАЩs sword shrieked along the rim; his point, by a freak of chance, snagged the
corner of SigebertтАЩs mouth and ripped upward through his cheek, to slice the ear from his head on that side.
The same soldier swung his ax. It split the scale byrnie to chop through ThorfinnтАЩs ribs and open his lung.
The Frankish lordling staggered, but did not fall. Red howling agony filled his head. He saw the man who had
hurt him. By naked instinct, he thrust home.
Thorfinn, stricken already, his armour gaping, had half a foot of steel rammed through his navel. The irony was
that never but in pain-maddened frenzy would Sigebert have used a thrust at all. Swordplay was entirely with
the edge, and of all men only Cormac mac Art seemed to appreciate what the point could do; the Gael used
it deliberately and constantly. He had learned the artтАЩs efficacy long ago in Eirrin, of a fine weapon-man. A
dead man, one of too many dead bloodying the GaelтАЩs life-wake.
Thorfinn fell, gasping. Sigebert stumbled through the door and half-toppled downstairs, screaming for the men
who surrounded the place. The three remaining soldiers retreated as far as the head of the stairs, dragging
the inert Balsus with them.
Cormac slammed the door and dropped its bar. тАЬOut of this!тАЭ he grunted.
тАЬBut my father!тАЭ
тАЬStay here, then.тАЭ
Clodia chose not to do that. She wrenched open the door on the roomтАЩs far side, and the reivers followed her
out. They left a bloody shambles behind them, as often theyтАЩd done afore, the lamplight shining on gore and
cloven metal. Then the door closed after them.
The trio stood in a musty darkness in the main part of the warehouse, on a crude railed gallery that ran about
it on three sides. The floor below was stacked with shipтАЩs goods: barrels, bales and bundles; canvas and thin
dressed leather for sails and pitch for caulking; oil and candles and salt meat, rope and cord and twine. And
concealed among it all, as leaves in a forest, such trade items as were never bought for sailors. They would
be found and confiscated for certain, but there was no time to resent that.
At the warehouseтАЩs far end were strong double doorsтАФwith more Franks waiting hard by them, the
blaze-eyed Cormac guessed.
Within reach though was rope in plenty, and WulfhereтАЩs ax knocked a hole in the roof with a couple of
careless blows. He boosted Clodia through it first, as she was the lightest. Cormac followed, mounting on the
DaneтАЩs vast shoulders. The while Wulfhere made scathing remarks about his weight, his clumsiness and the
unclean state of his feet, so offensively near his captainтАЩs nose.
Cormac vanished nimbly through the hole, braced his feet on the beam WulfhereтАЩs ax had exposed, and
lowered the rope.
Like the beam itself and CormacтАЩs steely muscles, it creaked as the Danish giant climbed out of the
warehouse. Mother-naked and bone dry, Wulfhere weighed nigh two and three-quarters hundred pounds. In
full war-gear he went far over three hundred, and it was not just anyone, any body, who could play his
anchor-man.
As he had come up last, he went down first.
Cormac gripped Clodia, growled, тАЬWulfhere! Catch!тАЭ and tossed her unceremoniously from the roof. She
squeaked, biting off her scream.
The young woman was solidly made, and her impact in WulfhereтАЩs arms from such a height drove even him to