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

Combine's cavalry dared not venture. Their comrades were dead,
fed ravens in a forgotten valley countless twisted miles behind
their bent shoulders. Their leader, whose infamous cunning and
deadly sword at last had failed them, was dying in his saddle.
They were all dead men.
 And night was upon them.
"Thoem! It's dark as the inside of a tomb!" cursed Weed,
trying to follow the shadow-hidden trail. He glanced uneasily at
the blood-hued disk rising above the ridges of autumn. The moon
cast no light this night.
"We're almost there," Darros promised him from the darkness
ahead.
Moments later the trail rose over a gap, and he called back,
"There it is! And there's lights! The inn hasn't been deserted, after
all."
Not quite, Weed observed. Even in the thick gloom, he could
see that Raven's Eyrie lay half in ruins. The grey stone and black
timber structure crouched on the edge of the deep valley below
them, rising from a bluff overlooking the River Cotras. By the
dim-eyed rows of windows, Weed noted that the main building of
the sprawling caravanserai stood at least three storeys. The
outlying wings of the inn appeared no more than fire-gutted
walls. River mist hung over the blackened walls of Raven's Eyrie,
and in the darkness below the limestone bluff, the Cotras
thundered its unseen rush to the western coast.
Cautiously they urged their exhausted mounts down the
twisting path that descended the ridge from the gap. The last grey
ghost of twilight died away as they emerged from the pine-buried
slope and reached the river road. Though wider than the path
they had been following, the river road showed signs of neglect.
New saplings speared through its hoof-beaten surface, and older
trees reached out from the looming forest on either side. Men and
horses had ridden by, and smaller hoofprints marked the passage
of an occasional drover, but wagon ruts were few, and these old
and eroded. Weed reflected that the depredations of Kane and
his men probably explained the near abandonment of this once
heavily travelled trace.
 In darkness they approached the inn. Only a few of the
outbuildings remained standing, but they could catch the smell
and soft noises of horses and livestock. Several lighted windows
of bull's-eye glass stared dimly toward the road. A pair of smoky
lanterns hung beside the front entrance, but the thick timbered
door had the look of being bolted. A wooden sign hung out above
the lanterns, swinging slightly, though the wind was less raking
here in the valley. Its paint was charred, and the panel bore blade
scars, but Weed could make out the blocky Lartroxian letters:
"Raven's Eyrie." On the sign above the letters perched a huge
raven, in bas-relief and painted black. Someone had set a bit of
red glass into the bird's eye, and lamplight glinted there. The
raven seemed to watch their approach.