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

cold, she felt a certain shaky strength in its wake. Her teeth
chartered; the fire in her room had almost died, and no one had
filled the woodbox.
The angry shouts had subsided by the time Klesst tiptoed down
the narrow halfway to the balcony overlooking the inn's common
room. Cautiously she crept through the shadows to the pine log
railing and peered from behind a gnarled post.
She darted back in fearтАФthen, certain that the shadows
concealed her, risked a longer glance. Her eyes grew wide with a
child's wondering stare.
The front door of the inn was flung open. Cold gusts slanted
the lantern flames, spun curled leaves across the threshold.
StrangersтАФwild, dangerous menтАФhad burst into Raven's Eyrie.
Death had entered with them.
A burly, black-bearded man held a cocked crossbow; his eyes
searched the shadows of the common room and raked the
balcony where Klesst crouched closer to the log railing. Another
man with gangling limbs and mousy, straw-colored hair
brandished a narrow blade of unusual length. He seemed to be in
charge, for he snarled commands to someone outside the inn.
The inhabitants of the inn and its few guests stood frozen
against the long bar. There was Mother, her expression
unreadable, with Selle, the scrawny serving maid, cowering
against her. Pot-bellied Cholos, who served her mother as tapster,
licked his lips nervously and glanced sidelong at the hulking
Mauderas, who kept the stables and saw to such heavy work as
was ever done at Raven's Eyrie. Mauderas's eyes were sullen as
he pressed a hand to his crimson-sodden sleeve. Two guests,
apparently drovers, were backed against the bar as well. Another
guest, whose green tunic identified him as a ranger, lay crumpled
beside an overturned table, a crossbow bolt through his back.
Bandits! Klesst realized with a shudder, recalling the many
lurid tales she had listened in on, safely crouched by the corner of
the fireplace. The murderous outlaws who held sway over the
mountain wildernessтАФwho had laid waste to Raven's Eyrie one
awful night before her birth.
There was a disturbance at the door. Two more bandits
appeared, staggering under the burden of a third man. One was a
wiry figure, partially bald and gap-toothed, though his hair was
barely greyed. The other was a husky, swarthy-faced tough with
cropped ears and battered nose. The man they shouldered
between them was as large as the two together. His clothes were
filthy with dirt and caked blood; matted red hair bung over his
bearded, brutal face. Klesst remembered the stories she had
heard of ogres and trolls that were said to haunt the mountains,
lairing in hidden caves and creeping forth at night to pull down
travellers and steal little girls from their beds. Klesst had thought
the big man unconscious. But as the outlaws supported him into
the room, his knees suddenly straightened, and she heard him
say, "I'll sit over there."