"Roberts, John Maddox - Stormlands 03 - The Poisoned Lands UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts John Maddox)

As she drew near, her mouth opened, allowing her to breathe deeply without making a sound. Then she came to a clearing and saw her prey clearly. He was a short, strongly built man with skin the color of tarnished bronze, and coarse, black hair. He wore a loincloth of supple leather that had ornamented flaps dangling to the knees front and back, and a necklace of polished stones. She saw a short dagger at his waist and a stone-headed mace, stitched over with rawhide, thonged to his wrist. His sandals were molded closely to his feet.
Slowly, looking from side to side, the man reached out and parted the fronds just before him. Not far away she could hear the inarching army, and she knew that this was a vantage point chosen by the man to spy on it. As he stood in utter stillness Stalker worked her way closer. She could see a muscle working at the corner of his jaw, as if he were splicing, but he made no sound. From this she deduced that he was counting silently. Her suspicion was confirmed by the movement of his left hand, as the tips of his fingers and thumb ticked against one another in a formalized enumerating ritual. Was this a trained spy, or just a peasant who knew how to count livestock? She suspected the former. Few save trained spies combined the skills of warrior, hunter and herdsman.
She could have hurled her spear into his broad back, but she wanted to see how close she could get before he detected her presence. A cautious step at a time, she closed the distance. She considered an amusing way to apprise him of her presence and his doom. Perhaps an ear-splitting war cry, or a gentle tap on his shoulder with her spear-point. Even as these things things ran through her mind, something
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made the muscles of his back tighten. Slowly, he turned his head to the left. She froze, but as she knew that she was within his field of vision, she gave him a hideous, bronze-toothed grin. He whirled, his eyes gone wide with shock and terror at what must have seemed to him a jungle demon sprung to life ten feet behind him.
He wasted little time despite his "shock. With a swift bound she would not have credited, he dashed away to his left and the jungle closed behind him. Stalker plunged into the bush after him. As she ran she smiled. This was the part she liked best; the chase. The slow stalk was enthralling, but the swift pursuit of the doomed quarry carried an erotic charge that made every nerve in her body blaze with vibrant life.
Now she had no need of the hunter's arts of reading signs. She could hear him ahead of her and occasionally catch glimpses of his sweaty hide as he tried to put distance between them. He was a powerful runner, but she knew she was better. Soon he would slow, both from fatigue and because he would think he had lost her. She deliberately kept her distance in these early stages, so that he would not see her behind him should he look over his shoulder.
Her long legs propelled her over the ground and her body flexed from side to side with serpentine fluidity, avoiding growth so dense that most normal humans would have needed to chop their way through it. Always she watched for traps. If her prey were truly skilled, he would have seeded his planned route of escape with snares, deadfalls and pits.
When she could tell from the sounds ahead of her that the man was staggering, she slowed and calmed her breathing. The sweat dripped from her body in streams but her movements were as deft and sure as ever. When she knew that he had slowed to a walk, Stalker began to circle. This was going to be intensely gratifying.
A few minutes later, the spy walked into a little clearing
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where the afternoon sun streamed down through an opening in the green canopy. His sweaty chest worked like a bellows and he looked behind him as he began to cross the open space. Turning back, his eyes bulged in disbelief to see Stalker emerge into the clearing directly in front of him.
"Who is your master, spy?" she hissed. "Who sent you to look upon my king's army?"
The man only gasped for breath, then attacked. He drew his knife and whirled his mace, rushing forward with a wordless cry. Exhausted as the man was, the charge was more of a lurch, which Stalker sidestepped with ease, thrusting her spear-point into his thigh as he passed. She jerked the point free and thrust it into the back of the other thigh and the man dropped to his knees with a cry of pain. As he flung his arms out to break his fall she seized his rawhide-wrapped mace and cut its wrist-thong with her knife. Before he could even think of a defense, she struck him on the back of his head, just above where the neck joined the skull. The spy collapsed bonelessly. Smiling, Stalker set to work.
When the man woke, groaning, his eyes unfocussed and his stomach nauseous, he was staked to the ground, his loincloth gone. His eyes straightened and filled with terror as realization of his predicament struck with full force. Stalker stood grinning above him, and the man knew himself to be in the power of something supernaturally evil.
"Now, spy," she said, "who do you serve?"
"I ... do ... not . . ." His words were halting and strangely accented, but she could understand him.
"Do not what?" she asked.
"Not talk to you," he said, his chin firming, knowing he was going to die. His face grew puzzled as she walked to him and stepped across his legs, straddling him. Then she sank to her knees.
"Oh, yes, you'll talk, my little spy." She drew her knife with one hand. With the other she grasped his penis and
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testicles, drawing them up tight as she laid the keen edge of her knife against their root. "You'll tell me what my king wishes to know. No man defies my king." The man began to scream, then to talk.
"He was just a scout for a regional commander to the south," Stalker said, displaying her bloody trophies to Gasam. "Some river boatmen caught sight of the fires of Marn burning and turned back down the river. The commander thought it only important enough to send a scout on foot. His garrison is only about three times the size of the one at Marn, but he does have a team of mounted messengers. With these he may be able to send word of our coming to the south and thence to the capital."
"Excellent, Stalker," Gasam commended her. "Again, you have proven to be my best scout and hunter. See if you can catch me another one on tomorrow's march."
Smiling, the woman departed to gloat among her sisters. Gasam congratulated himself once more on his wisdom and foresight in acquiring these unconventional warriors. He had asked for them specifically back in the days when he had allied himself with the king of Chiwa, whom the women had previously served. Led for once by a true warrior-king, they had happily transferred their allegiance. His more conventional followers found them horrifying, but that was why he liked them so much.
"Those mounted messengers could cause us trouble, my king," said Raba, one of his Shasinn senior commanders. He was a much-scarred veteran from Gasam's earliest days of conquest.
"I shall detach a small force, including some of the archers. They shall run ahead and take up position on the road to the south of the town and deal with any messengers sent south. If some get through ..." He shrugged. "They should only run into Luo's force. Surely they have reached
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the river by now. If not, Urlik's riders will catch them for sure."
"They might swim the river," Raba pointed out.
"It is possible, but even if they reach the. capital, they will not be in time to do King Mana any good. It would be amusing to arrive before his capital unannounced, but there are advantages to giving him some warning. He will concentrate his forces to defend the capital, where we can deal with them all at once. Otherwise his regional lords might break away with their personal forces. Then we will have to deal with them one by one, a tedious business."
Raba tossed another stick into the fire and took the wine jug passed by a fellow officer. Now that there had been a little blooding, discipline was slightly relaxed. In any case, officers were allowed more license than the common warriors. He took a long swallow of the tart wine and pondered his king's words.
"Are you sure that he will give battle before his capital, my king?" Raba asked.
"Assuredly. It is a peculiarity of these mainland kings that they will always defend the capital rather than fight on ground of their own choosing. It is a great weakness in them. They are very attached to their fine cities and think that if an enemy takes the capital, the war is lost. That is why it is important to drive deep into an enemy country before the king has a chance to assemble his forces. Given a chance, they will mobilize and march to keep you outside the borders. Once you menace the capital, they can think of nothing save defending it."
"Incredible," said a senior officer of the Squall Island Shasinn. His hair was dressed in the triple braids of that tribe. "Why don't they just give us their kingdoms, rather than make war so foolishly?" The others gathered at the king's shelter laughed.
"It suited them well enough as long as they fought only among themselves," Gasam pointed out. "Faced with an
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enemy who cares nothing for their customs, they can only act in the way with which they are familiar. That is why we must attack swiftly and win a quick, decisive victory. Because they are not wholly stupid and they can learn from their errors. Young commanders will take over when we have killed the old fools. Speed is everything in a war of conquest.''
FIVE
nary from
ueen Larissa had a blinding headache. It was the third in a month, and this both annoyed and frightened her. All her life, she had enjoyed extraordi-ealth, never knowing sickness, recovering swiftly injury. These devastating but decentralized pains caused her an unwelcome sense of frailty, a feeling of mortality to which she had thought herself immune. Irritably, she called for one of her women to massage her shoulders and neck. Sometimes that helped.
"Will you go out to oversee the new bridge, mistress?" the woman asked.
"If this headache will abate," she said. This was one of her new projects. The capital was built on both sides of the river, yet for centuries the kings of Chiwa had been content to use primitive ferries to connect the two banks. It surpassed her powers of imagination to come up with a reason why they would build vast temples and tombs of imperish-
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