"Karl Edward Wagner - Ravens Eyrie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

hope. And cutting through the dull panic was the agonizing
thought that he had thrown away his life to stay with a dead
man.
Pleddis's men filled the common room, warming themselves
with fire, food and drink, excited congratulations. He had pulled
them all inside when it was evident that the bandits had been
taken; they had rushed into the inn as if it were the last refuge
against the mist-shrouded night. Maybe it was. There were more
than twenty men milling about the room, wearing the motley gear
of mercenary soldiers. With their stamping and loud laughter,
they sounded like hunters just come in from a grueling and
successful hunt. From their impersonal stares, Weed felt like a
snared fox surrounded by a pack of baying hounds.
Seated by the fire, Pleddis was in high spirits. He drank wine
from a sloshing cup and accepted the applause of his men, his
weathered face almost flushed. There was little enough color to
the man. His skin was pale and seamed bleached instead of
tanned by wind and sun. His hair was close-cropped and grey, his
face clean-shaven; his eyes were of a peculiar washed-out blue
so as to appear grey. He was of average height, but compactly
built, giving him a deceptively stubby appearance. Gear of worn
leather and chain mail ionic were nondescript as his personтАФand
the same faded grey. But his teeth were straight and white, and
he flashed them in a broad smile when he laughed, which was
oftenтАФa rapid, mirthless bark.
He was laughing now.
"A fine last stand for Kane and his fearsome band of killers,
eh? Trapped like rabbits in a hole, sleeping like they was in their
mother's arms. One man snoring at his post, the other so busy
trying to get under the mistress's skirts that he never noticed she'd
unlatched the woodshed door to the outside. Vaul, what dreadful
desperadoes! I'm going to feel silly asking for the bounty on the
likes of you! But I'll still ask!" His men joined in his laughter.
Pleddis gulped down his wine, his shrill laugh muffled against
the cup. "Of course, you must have figured Captain Pleddis
would lie low tonight, sit shivering at his campfire, jumping every
time an owl screamed. Did you now? Sure you did. You really
thought I'd quit a trail not hours cold, and after three days of
chasing after you! Well, I grew up on Thovnos, so I guess I didn't
hear all the gruesome tales of Demonlord's Moon you mountain
people like to shudder over. Same goes for most of my men,
though some of them had their worries about riding on."
His face turned grim, and he stared contemptuously over their
ranks. A number of them avoided his eyes. "But it wasn't too
hard to make them see that a pack of devils was a better risk than
crossing Pleddis, eh?" He laughed again.
"Huh! What about the two men we lost getting here?"
grumbled a mercenary from the rear, who quickly ducked from
Pleddis's searching scowl.
"You'll not see them again," a husky voice told them. "The