"Emil Petaja - Tramontane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

in the kitchens where he toiled. The medics who demicrobed him and
made him live didnтАЩt. His teachers didnтАЩt, usually finding an excuse to
expel him from their classes as a disruptive influence. So this is how it had
ended up. Down here in the stygian dark where nobody could see how ugly
he was.

A coldness that was alive slithered over his legs. Reaching down to fling
it away his hands discovered that it had fangs on one end. He found that
out when they bit into his arm.

тАЬOwwwww!тАЭ he howled. His wolfish protest echoed dolefully across the
dank stony surfaces.

Now he knew what had wakened him. A nibbling serpent. His howl
rippled a sea of hissing around him and a sinister rustling. Snakes.
Hundreds. Thousands. A dungeon-ful of them, slithering like great black
worms over and under and around each other; now, it seemed to Kullervo
Kasi, moving methodically toward him to fang the intruder.

Kullervo loosed a small whimper and tried to climb the wall behind
him. There were erosions in the masonry between the great rough stones
and he managed to find chinks for his boots and clamber up away from
that ocean of reptilian flesh and fang.

He clung there, whimpering and waiting.

He thought maybe the snakes were curious or that he was warm and
they liked warm. Then he thought about his pukko. His treasure. He felt
under his blouse where he had fashioned a kind of pocket against his hide.
Yes. It was there. It was broken in two. It wouldnтАЩt help him much against
all those serpents, anyway. But he still had the pieces. He had that much.
The broken pukko and his blue stockings.

He was shivering so hard from the chill that he knew it was only a
matter of time before his fingers would be numb and heтАЩd have to go.
Desperately he thought when that happened he would run. He would
probably fall and then all those fangs would dig his flesh and kill him for
sure; but he would try. He went a step further. Why wait until his hands
and feet were numbed? Do it now!

About to drop, he was aware of a faint glow of light blossoming off in
the dark, outlining the high curve of a long tunnel. The light grew and
brightened. It swung to and fro in a zigzagging arc, bisected by shadowy
sprouting fingers.

It was a lanthorn, an ancient wooden lamp fed by fat-oil, a clumsy
thing. The man holding it up was big, stooped, and his attire matched the
antiqueness of the lanthorn. He wore chain mail over leg-tight hose, a
vivid scarlet cowl over lank slag-blond hair; a thick broadsword clanged
from his wide back, bent as he walked toward KullervoтАЩs spider-cling.