"Karl Edward Wagner - Reflections for the Winter of My Soul" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

The corpse toppled hollowly back upon the stones, now silent.
"He must not have been quite dead," offered the surgeon finally, but not even he believed that.




I. The Rider in the Storm


Kane at last was forced to admit to himself that he was totally lost, that for the past hour he had been
without any sense of direction whatsoever. He kicked his plodding horse onward, cursing the fate that
had set him abroad in this frozen wasteland during what seemed to be the worst blizzard in his long
memory. The shaggy steed was close to floundering with exhaustion, for even its rugged north-bred
endurance had been overtaxed by the days of flight which had left them lost in this fantastic ice storm.
Two impressions filled Kane's weary mind. One was a sensation of unbearable, soul crushing cold--cold
accumulated during the days of travel through the wintered land and now multiplied by this needled wind
of ice. The chill sought for him through the thick folds of heavy fur that surrounded him, and Kane knew
that when he stopped moving, he would quickly freeze to death.
The second impression was one of awful necessity to outdistance his pursuers. They had dogged his trail
relentlessly for the long, cold days, penetrating every trick this master of deception had employed to hide
the signs of his progress. But then with the last powers of the priests of Sataki, his pursuers had little
chance of missing a trail that no human eye could discover.
Since noon Kane had often been able to catch sight of them, so close had they gained on him. Knowing
that they would almost inevitably overtake him by nightfall, he had welcomed the sudden blizzard when it
had come. Although he doubted if even this could cover his tracks from the ken of those grim hunters, he
hoped to gain invaluable time--possibly to recover his lead over them. But the storm had become a
screaming nightmare of white in which Kane had lost his way completely, and now frozen death joined
with those others who sought to bring down the ice-encrusted man who slumped forward in his saddle.
Many days behind him and to the southeast lay the independent principality of Rader, once the northmost
province of the old Serranthonian Empire, but now broken away in the collapse of the Empire which had
followed the extinction of the line of Halbros-Serrantho. Rader had become a frontier backwater after
the dynastic wars had destroyed the strength and wealth of the central states and had created a band of
desolation cutting Rader off from the civilization to the south. Law had been lost in the imperial
disintegration and never restored. In obedience to ancient principle, brute power shaped chaos into a
more orderly framework, and Rader had been ruled for the past century (when it was ruled at all) by a
variety of warlords. It had been a motley succession, for the land was of little value or importance. Thus
its rulers had usually been petty and relatively unambitious men--old nobility, adventurers, robber barons,
and the like.
Until some few days before, Rader had been ruled by the hated exile Orted Ak-Ceddi, onetime bandit
leader turned Prophet of Sataki. Under his fanatical command, the dark cult of Sataki had exploded from
obscurity into a crimson wave of terror that had overwhelmed the forest land of Shapeli far to the south
and had very nearly broken forth to hurl its legions upon the southern kingdoms. But his power had at last
been smashed, and Orted had fled the ruins of his Dark Crusade with only a few of his most loyal
followers. Safe in the obscurity of this northern backwater, Orted had seized control of Rader with the
last remnant of his former strength and had settled down to ponder the tangled riddles of fortune and
power.
To Rader had come Kane in the night. As the mercenary general of the Prophet's cavalry, Kane had both
been creator of the fighting arm of the Dark Crusade as well as the cause of its ultimate failure. Treachery
on Kane's part had first sundered the Sword of Sataki, but Orted's final insane double-cross had brought
on disaster for them both. Orted had escaped the ensuing slaughter of his followers, but Kane was