"Weber, David - Hradani (Oath of Swords) 02 - The War God's Own (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

wall to get more height, and his sword hissed with dreadful, rhythmic precision. The Sothoii were like wheat before one of Dwarvenhame's horse-drawn reapers, spilling away from him in a writhing wedge of severed limbs and lopped-off heads, and despite Mathian's earlier exhortations, they were unable to use their numbers effectively. There was only so much frontage, and Bahzell and his men had axes and swords enough to cover it all. The Sothoii were forced to meet them at little better than one-to-one odds, and it seemed impossible that any of them could possibly break through.
But they could. Individually overmatched or no, they swarmed forward, and here and there a hradani went down. Other members of the Order stepped forward to take their places, but a few Sothoii managed to wedge into the openings they'd made. Most died seconds later, but before they did, their advance had cracked the defensive front enough for the men behind them to strike at the flanks of other defenders. A gap opened in the hradani's line at the extreme left of the wall, and a roar of triumph went up as still more Sothoii stormed forward to exploit it.
"To me, lads! To me!" Hurthang bellowed to Bahzell's reserve, and went to meet the breakthrough. Kaeritha Seldansdaughter charged with him, and the two of them slammed through the confusion like a spearhead. They met the leading Sothoii warriors head-on, and Hurthang's axe struck like Bahzell's own sword. Dead men spilled away from him, and Kaeritha spun to her left, covering his flank as the Sothoii tried to flow around him. Their light armor and sabres were a better match for her shorter swords, but it didn't matter. She killed her first two opponents before they even realized she was there. Sheer weight of numbers pushed her and Hurthang back a stride then, but they wove a web of steel before them, no longer attacking but seeking only to hold, and then the reserve was there with Gharnal at its head, driving the breakthrough back.

Mathian of Glanharrow reeled, vision spangled by bursts of light, as the hradani broadsword smashed down on his helmet. His banner bearer was already down, hands clutching at the oozing hole where the spearhead of a daggered axe had punched clean through his cuirass, and Festian leapt desperately forward to cover his lord.
He lashed out at the hradani with his sabre and felt it bite on the other's thigh, but even as he struck, the hradani's sword smashed his light shield to splinters. He cried out as his arm broke under the blow, and the hradani struck again, as if he hadn't even felt the sword cut. Festian managed to get his sabre up to block the blow, but the hradani's heavier sword caught it right at the hilt and snapped it squarely in two.
The veteran hurled himself backward. It was all he could do, and he heard himself cry out again as his broken arm took the brunt of his fall. But at least he'd thrown himself out of the hradani's reach, and his desperate leap had knocked Mathian backward, as well. They slithered down the rough rock wall and the heaped bodies together, like a boy's sled on snow, and then Festian hit the bottom, stunned and barely half conscious from the pain in his arm, with Mathian beside him.
"Lord Glanharrow is down! They've killed the Lord Warden!"
The shouts went up from men who'd already seen Mathian's banner fall, and panic spread out from them like pestilence. Warriors who had surged forward into the slaughter atop the fort's walls felt the drive of those behind falter, and suddenly they were giving ground themselves, falling back and fighting only in self-defense as they retreated.
Festian saw it happening, as he'd seen it happen to one side or the other in too many battles, and knew it couldn't be stopped. Not, at any rate, by one middle-aged knight with a broken arm and no sword. He shoved himself back to his feet with a grunt of anguish and fastened the fingers of his good hand on Mathian's cuirass. Fresh agony lashed through his bad arm, but his heave brought the Lord Warden to his feet and got him staggering-still stunned by the blow his helmet had turned-away from the fort.

Bahzell saw the Sothoii break off, and a dozen of his own men started after them.
"Stop!" he bellowed. His deep voice cut through the bedlam, and they looked over their shoulders. "Back!" he shouted, pointing back down into Charhan's Despair with his gore-soaked blade. "Back into the fort, lads!"
For just a moment, he thought they were too carried away with battle fever to heed him, but then they obeyed. They scrambled back into the fort, and he heard Vaijon shouting for men to get their shields back up behind him.
But no fresh arrow storm came. The fight atop the wall had only seemed to last forever, but it had lasted long enough for the light to go. Even as the Sothoii fell back, the sun sank beyond the western cliffs at last, and darkness fell like an axe blow. The Sothoii archers no longer had light to shoot by, and Bahzell breathed a prayer of gratitude.
He looked out into the dimness, and a carpet of pain writhed before him. At least three hundred Sothoii lay out there, most dead but many wounded, and he bared his teeth. The Lord Warden of Glanharrow wouldn't be so quick to launch a second assault, he thought grimly.
But then he turned to survey the interior of the fort, and his jaw tightened. Twenty or thirty Sothoii had actually made it over the wall; all of them lay dead or wounded . . . but so did at least that many of his own. It looked as if half or more of the Order's casualties had been inflicted by the preliminary arrow fire, however. Now that darkness had taken the Sothoii's bows effectively out of play, their losses would be enormously higher than the Order's in any fresh attacks.
Which didn't mean they couldn't still take Charhan's Despair away from him in the end. But at least they'd wait until dawn to try if they had a shred of sense.
He drew a deep breath, then straightened his shoulders. Many of his men already knelt over the wounded, hradani and human alike, and he and Kaeritha and Vaijon would have plenty to keep them busy in the meantime.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Sir Mathian thrust the surgeon roughly away and heaved himself up off the camp stool. The world swooped about him, but at least this time he managed to stay upright, and he lurched to the tied-back flap of the tent someone had managed to erect beside the field surgery. Chaos almost as wild as that inside his head swirled under the torches outside the tent, and he clung doggedly to a tent pole while he made his brain sort the confusion into some sort of order.
It wasn't actually as bad as it looked, he realized slowly. The surgery had been set up in one of the few wider stretches of the Gullet, but there was little room to spare. His men were packed tightly together in what space there was, and the crowd seemed to seethe and flow as messengers and stragglers trying to get back to their units pushed their way through the press. The unsteady light of the torches only made it look even more confused, and he clung to the pole as vertigo washed through him.
"Milord, you must sit back down!" the surgeon protested. "At the very least, you have a concussion, and there may-"
"Be silent!" Mathian rasped. He closed his eyes, and his head pounded as if a dozen dwarves with pickaxes were trapped inside and trying to get out. The force of his command to the surgeon didn't help the pain one bit, but at least the man shut his mouth. That was something, the Lord Warden thought, and opened his eyes once more.
"You-guard!" he called to one of the sentries outside the tent. He didn't recognize the man, but the guard turned at his summons.
"Yes, Milord?"
"Send Sir Haladhan to me at once!"
"I-" The guard hesitated, glancing at his fellow, then cleared his throat. "I can't, Milord. Sir Haladhan . . . didn't return from the attack."
Mathian clung even more tightly to the tent pole, staring at the guard, and his eyes burned. Haladhan? Dead? It couldn't be. The gods wouldn't permit it! But as he stared out into the torchlight and the chorus of scream-shot moans from the surgery washed over him, he knew the gods would permit it. Deep inside, part of him recognized that the attack on the hradani's fort had been no more than a skirmish compared to the slaughter of a major battle. But that recognition meant nothing at this moment. It had been Mathian's first taste of real combat, and the brutality and savagery of it had turned all his dreams of triumphant glory and vengeance for his father into cruel mockeries. He had never before known such terror, never imagined such horror, and now he'd lost Haladhan, as well.
But he may not be dead. He may still be alive out there . . . and is that any better?
He shuddered, picturing his cousin writhing on the rocky floor of the Gullet, sobbing while he clutched at the crossbow bolt buried in his belly or the sword slash which had spilled his intestines in the dirt. Or, worse, screaming as the hradani avenged their own losses by torturing the wounded.
Yet even as imagination tormented him, he realized he had to do something. A craven voice in the back of his brain urged him to listen to the surgeon, to sit back down and surrender to the man's ministrations, using his injury to hide from his responsibilities. It was tempting, that voice, yet he dared not heed it. He was Lord Warden of Glanharrow, and he was the one whose orders had brought all these men here. However right or wrong the decision had been, it had been his, and if he was to retain any ability to command them in the future, he could not show weakness now.
"Very well," he told the guard who was still staring at him. "What of Sir Festian?"
"He's with the surgeons, Milord." Mathian looked up sharply, but the guard shook his head reassuringly. "It's only a broken arm, Milord. He's having it set."
"Good." Mathian rubbed his forehead, jaw clenched against the pain. "Ask him to join me here as soon as he can. And pass the word to the other captains. I'll want to speak to them as soon as Sir Festian and I have conferred."
"Yes, Milord!" The guard saluted and hurried off into the confusion, and Mathian allowed the insistent surgeon to at least get him to sit back down.

"That's the best we can do for them, I'm afraid," Kaeritha said.
She and Vaijon sat with Bahzell, and all of them clutched hot mugs of tea. Bahzell blinked, struggling with the aftermath of healing the wounded, and nodded. Vaijon said nothing. It was the first time he had ever touched the healing power Tomanak granted his champions, and the aftereffects had hit him harder than his more experienced companions. He'd done well, though, Bahzell thought, reaching out to rest one hand on the youngster's shoulder. Vaijon looked up, half-dazed but blue eyes glowing with the joy of bringing life, not death, and Bahzell squeezed. Then he looked at Kaeritha.
"Aye, I'm afraid you've the right of it," he said. He didn't like the admission, but if they expended any more strength on healing, they would be useless if the Sothoii launched another assault. A part of him felt guilty for having seen to their own worst wounded before turning to the enemy. He knew some of the hradani they'd healed would have survived unaided while many of the Sothoii they had not healed would die, yet they'd had no choice. They needed every man they had-on his feet and ready to fight, not lying wounded in his blankets-and it hadn't been their decision to launch this attack.
"D'you think they'll come at us again?" a voice asked, and he turned his head to find Brandark at his side.
"I've no idea at all, at all," he said after a moment. "I'd not try it again before dawn in their boots, assuming I was wanting to try again at all."
"They might try under cover of darkness," Kaeritha pointed out. "They could creep in a lot closer, and they might think they could surprise us."
"Aye, so they might," another voice rumbled. Hurthang loomed out of the darkness and seated himself on a boulder beside her. "But we're talking of Sothoii here, Kerry, and for all that young fool as 'parleyed' with us isn't after having the sense the gods gave idiot geese, there's bound to be some older heads over yonder. And if there are, then they'll know as how hradani see nigh as well as cats in the dark. They'll not surprise us by creeping up unseen, come what may, lass."
"Which isn't to be saying they won't try," Bahzell said, "and from all I've had the hearing of, this Mathian of Glanharrow's fool enough to try almost anything. Still and all, I'm thinking you've the right of it, Hurthang. We'll be keeping a sharp eye on them, but if they've a brain in their heads, they'll wait on light for their archers to be seeing by."

"We should attack again now, while they're still licking their wounds!" Mathian insisted, and Festian turned from where he'd stood watching the surgeons through the tent doorway. His broken arm throbbed-he'd almost passed out twice while the bonesetter splinted it-and he felt as if the sobs of the wounded were a dark and restless sea on which he drifted.
"We hurt the bastards-I know we did-and there were fewer of them to begin with," Mathian went on. "And we've our own wounded to think about, lying out there where those butchers can get at them. We have to rescue them. And-"
"Milord, shut up."