"Jim Theis - The Eye of Argon (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Theis Jim)

of strides from one end to the other of the cell, and knew the exact number
of slabs which made up the bleak dungeon. Numorous schemes were introduced
and alternately discarded in turn as they succored to unravel to him no
means of escape which stood the slightest chance of sucess.
Anguish continued to mount as his means of occupation were rapidly
exhausted. Suddenly without no tive, he wasrouted from his contemplations
as he detected a faint scratching sound at the end of the crypt opposite
him. The sound seemed to be caused by something trying to scrape away at
the grantite blocks the floor of the enclosure consisted of, the sandy
scratching of something like an animal's claws.
Grignr gradually groped his way to the other end of the vault
carefully feeling his way along with his hands ahead of him. When a few
inches from the wall, a loud, penetrating squeal, and the scampering of
small padded feet reverberated from the walls of the roughly hewn chamber.
Grignr threw his hands up to shield his face, and flung himself
backwards upon his buttocks. A fuzzy form bounded to his hairy chest,
burying its talons in his flesh while gnashing toward his throat with its
grinding white teeth;its sour, fetid breath scortching the sqirming
barbarians dilating nostrils. Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor
muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to
hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular, as its beady grey organs of
sight glazed into the flaring emeralds of its prey.
Taking hold of the rodent around its lean, growling stomach with both
hands Grignr pried it from his crimson rent breast, removing small patches
of flayed flesh from his chest in the motion between the squalid black
claws of the starving beast. Holding the rodent at arms length, he cupped
his righthand over its frothing face, contrcting his fingers into a
vice-like fist over the quivering head. Retaining his grips on the rat,
grignr flexed his outstretched arms while slowly twisting his right hand
clockwise and his left hand counter clockwise motion. The rodent let out a
tortured squall, drawing scarlet as it violently dug its foam flecked fangs
into the barbarians sweating palm, causing his face to contort to an ugly
grimace as he cursed beneath his braeth.
With a loud crack the rodents head parted from its squirming torso,
sending out a sprinking shower of crimson gore, and trailing a slimy string
of disjointed vertebrae, snapped trachea, esophagus, and jugular,
disjointed hyoid bone, morose purpled stretched hide, and blood seared
muscles.
Flinging the broken body to the floor, Grignr shook his blood streaked
hands and wiped them against his thigh until dry, then wiped the blood that
had showered his face and from his eyes. Again sitting himself upon the
jagged floor, he prepared to once more revamp his glum meditations. He
told himself that as long as he still breathed the gust of life through his
lungs, hope was not lost; he told himself this, but found it hard to
comprehend in his gloomy surroundings. Yet he was still alive, his bulging
sinews at their peak of marvel, his struggling mind floating in a miral of
impressed excellence of thought. Plot after plot sifted through his mind
in energetic contemplations.
Then it hit him. Minutes may have passed in silent thought or days,
he could not tell, but he stumbled at last upon a plan that he considered