"Tepper, Sheri S - A Plague Of Angels - plangel4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

Coyote lay stunned behind a rock while other animals and monsters ranged across him and around him.
Black Owl, recumbent, stabbed with his lance at the walker above him. He was lying in a pool of his own blood and did not think he would rise from this place again.
Wide Mountain Mother watched and cursed while her daughters worked among the bodies of the wounded and slain. At the gate, a clot of Ellels and Anders tried to flee back through the gate


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Sheri S. Tepper

and were pursued by walkers who then began attacking every person they saw inside the Place.
And in Ellel's closet, Mitty sweated, cursed, and said over his shoulder to Berkli, "I wish you'd thought of this earlier, Berkli. I wish it hadn't taken so long to get into the closet. I wish I'd been quicker figuring out what this
thing is set for. Really, you should have thought of this first.""I know," growled Berkli. "Will you hurry!"
"I have hurried. Well, as they say, do or die. This is it, or we're all dead!"
He punched in a signal, then another, and another yet.
Inside and outside the wall the walkers staggered. They moaned. They stopped. They gazed sightless, at nothing. They cried out, a vast inhuman cry of loss or despair or some totally indecipherable feeling, perhaps only an enormous severance, and fell. Row on row. Rank on rank. Black helmets and red and gold, like beads from a necklace, dropping like wheat from the scythe, eyes going blank, voices going mute, falling down in their hordes.
From the top of the sky the Griffin stooped, screaming, dropping in a great flurry of scaled wings at the foot of the wall near where Tom Fuelry still crouched over his device. Any view of those fallen there was lost under the flailing of great wings and a tangle of Gaddirs and gangers, struggling to rise.
The Griffin rose again, half seen through a cloud of dust. It arrowed away
to the north.Silence.
Silence utter. As though the world held its breath.

Sybbis leaped to the ground and ran to the place Abasio had been, pulling and tugging as she searched among the bodies, crying Abasio's name. Where was he? Who could tell if he was there or not? There were bodies in the pile who might be Abasio. Faces were disfigured, torsos and limbs were mangled.
"Abasio!" she screamed. The gangers took up the cry, making the canyon ring with the sound.
"He not here," said CummyNup, as he sadly rummaged among the fallen. "He dead, Sybbis."
She had tears on her face. Over the past days, she had built him into something more than merely mortal, something that could not be allowed to die. "Not!" she cried, whirling to face her followers. "Gone, not dead. Basio the Cat, he got nine lives. Basio, he can't die."
"Gone," they cried obediently, exalted by the moment., "Gone, not dead." Above them on the road the feathered warriors caught their breaths and


n they

)u/der taken I this

A PLAGUE OF ANGELs
399 raised their own war cry. From beyond them, away south, Came a howling
and yelping of animal packs, and from farther yet Came the bell-like noise at' SWord hilts striking shields.
As they turned about and Worked their slow Way northward
Wilderness and forest lairs, even the monsters sang into the rocky
l~erkli clapped Mitty on the an
wept Unashamedly. back, Wordlessly, then hugged the man and
Deep in Gaddi House, awful paean of victory.
to and fro. the old man bowed his head and shook it slowly
"Pity," he said. "Always, Such a pity."


~ate afternoon, wearing on to the close of a sunless day. Sparse snow, whirling, refusing to settle. Blood turning to dark ice; the wounded cursing or crying out as they are lifted and carried away to warmer places beside hastily built fires, where skilled Gaddirs or Artemisians are gathered to offer succor. Bodies chilling into death as other Artemisians and gangers move sadly among the slain. Everywhere the slink of walkers, their rigid forms, their staring eyes. They are not dead or dying. They are merely inactivated. Merely quiescent. Firelight reflects from their red orbs, giving an appearance of life, and rescuers shudder, looking hastily elsewhere.

In the Place of Power, Ellels mutter in their homes, speaking of their leader's rage when she returns to find what has happened. They are impotent. Every Ellel with any capacity for leadership is on the shuttle. Anders huddle in their pavilion, speaking worriedly of the strange alliance the day has brought forth. Forsmdoth Ander is among them. Though he should have gone, a last-moment


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