"Nancy Varian - Berberick - Dalamar the Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varian Nancy)

there. Some had been- nailed by spears and ashwood lances. They looked like
insects pinned to a display board. An impatient detachment of the dragonarmy
had broken through the burning barrier into the stony area beyond where those
three villages had lain. The dragonmen weren't going unmet, for even as they
ran raging into a fourth village downriver, elves met them with bows and
steel.
Phair Caron laughed again, and again the sound of it was torn from her lips.
"Look there! Defenders. Now, that won't do, will it?"
It would not. With startling speed, the red dragon dropped down from the sky,
bursting out of the bitter blue sky right over the battle. On the ground, the
elves looked up, their faces pale ovals. One, a bold fool, lifted his bow and
drew to launch an arrow. Blood Gem roared, the sound so loud the air trembled,
the earth itself shook. Screams, like the thin whine of gnats, came up from
the battleground. The elf who fancied himself a fortunate archer fell to his
knees, terrified. His bow, like a little stick of tinder, fell to the ground.
Tinder, Blood Gem thought. Ah ...
He thrust hard with his mighty wings, gaining the heights again, and turned
round over the village. Nothing was afire there, not house, not barn, and
certainly not the crowding aspenwood. This wasn't good. On the ground, a
phalanx of draconians charged into the midst of the defenders, maces
whistling, their ghastly voices like the screaming of stones. From so high up,
Blood Gem saw the blood gleaming on the terrible points of the maces, though
he did not smell it. Just as well, just as well. Had he smelled the blood he'd
have been able to smell the misbegotten dragonmen too. He banked and turned.
Upon his back, Phair Caron shouted a wild battle cry.
Roaring, Blood Gem dropped low over the aspens as the draconians drove the
elves into the darkness of the forest. Behind, a house burst into flames, the
fire kindled by a flaring torch in a draconian fist. Inside a woman screamed,
a child wailed, their cries damped by the whoosh and roar of the roof
catching. The sweet stench of burning flesh drifted upon black smoke.
"A pretty little fire!" Phair Caron shouted. "But we can do better!"
Blood Gem filled up his lungs with air and, as though those lungs were a
bellows, he pushed air out past the place in his throat where dragonfire
lived. Death's own banner, flames poured from between his fanged jaws. Flames
touched the tops of the aspens, and Blood Gem flew past those, firing the
trees beyond and to either side. Elf voices shouted in terror. Men, women, and
children were herded into a deadly trap, bounded on three sides by fire and on
the other by creatures from nightmare, winged draconians whose reptilian eyes
held no warmth, whose powerful tails could break the bones of a foe with one
swipe. The least of the tribes of dragonmen, these were the Baaz, and they
loved nothing better than killing. Some, it was said, did feast on their
kills.
"Now take us back," the highlord shouted. "This has been diverting, but I have
work yet to do before the night is over."
Reluctantly, Blood Gem turned north toward the Khalkists and the army's camp.
Behind them and below, the draconians finished their work, burning every house
in the village, killing each man and woman and child they found. One or two
escaped. Phair Caron could see it from the heights, but she did not regret
that. Let them run. Let them flee downriver to the other towns, wailing the
song of their terror until it reached the ears of the elf-king, Speaker Lorac