"David Weber & Linda Evans - Hell Hath No Fury" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)
- Prologue
worked to force him to admit to himself that life truly did go on. Wounds like Shaylar's death might
never go away, but at least they could scar over, turn into something a grownup learned to cope with
rather than retreating into an endless morass of depression and petulantly refusing to have anything more
to do with the world about him. And in his own caseтАФ
"Welcome to Fort Salby."
Kinlafia turned as the sound of the train master's voice interrupted his thoughts. Despite his Arpathian
surname, Irnay Tarka was a Uromathian, from the independent Kingdom of Eniath. He was also an
employee of the Trans-Temporal Express, one of the hundreds of workers pushing the railhead steadily
down-chain towards Hell's Gate now that they could finally get their heavy equipment forward through
the Traisum Cut. They'd driven the line to within less than four hundred miles of Fort Mosanik in Karys,
which had been an enormous relief. No one was going to be sending any of the TTE's luxury passenger
coaches out here to the edge of the frontier anytime soon, but even this spartanly furnished, bare-bones,
pack-'em-in-cheek-by-jowl people-hauler was an enormous improvement over a saddle.
Tarka grinned, almost as if he could read Kinlafia's mind.
"Saddle sores feeling any better?" he asked, and Kinlafia snorted.
"It's going to take more than one miserable day for that," the Voice said. "Mind you, I'm not
complaining. Just having the opportunity to sit down on something reasonably flat is a gift from the
gods!"
"We aim to please," Tarka said. Then his grin faded slightly. "On a more serious note, Voice Kinlafia,
it's been an honor."
Kinlafia half-waved one hand in a dismissing gesture that was more than a little uncomfortable. That
was another thing Janaki had been right about. As the sole survivor of the massacred Chalgyn
acquired a degree of fame (or notoriety, perhaps) which he'd never wanted. It wasn't as if he'd done
anything that wonderful. In fact, he would never forgive himself, however illogical he knew it was, for
not having somehow managed to save his friends' lives.
Tarka seemed about to say something more, then stopped himself and simply gave a small headshake.
Kinlafia smiled crookedly at him and held out his right hand, and Tarka clasped forearms with him.
"Good luck, Voice Kinlafia," the train master said. "And a safe journey home. A lot of people are going
to want to hear from you directly."
"I know," Kinlafia managed not to sigh.
He nodded to the Eniathian, walked down the aisle, and then climbed down the carriage's steep steps
onto the sunbaked, weathered-looking planks of the station under a sky of scorching, cloudless blue. It
was only late morning, but the platform's heat struck up through the soles of his boots as if he were
walking across a stovetop, and he was acutely grateful when he reached the cover of the shed-like roof
built to throw a band of shade across the rearmost third of the boardwalk.
The locomotive lay panting quietly as the station's water tower topped off its tender and its fireman and
his grease gun worked their way down its side. It wasn't one of the behemoths which pulled TTE's
massive freight and passenger trains closer to the home universe, nor was it as beautifully painted and
maintained. In fact, it was a shabby, scruffy work engine, with an old-fashioned half-diamond
smokestack, grimy, banged-up, dust-covered paint, and no pretension to the grandeur of its more
aristocratic brethren. No doubt it was out here in the first place because newer and more powerful
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Nieuwe%20map/Weber,%20Da...ell%20Hath%20No%20Fury%20(ARC)/A1416521011___0.htm (4 of 13)12-1-2007 22:17:48
- Prologue
engines had replaced it closer to home. The TTE could spare it from passenger and normal freight
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