"Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Dragons Of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weis Margaret)

breath until she could stand it no longer.
A stroke of lightning erupted from the blue monster so violently, it propelled the pitiful ogre back fifty feet
through the air, then smashed him into the wreckage of a crude wooden dwelling. He dropped heavily to the
ground, his charred body spasming with the massive electrical charges that surged through him. Sparks
twined across his blackened, terrorized face. Tendrils of acrid smoke rose from the dry wood, and in
seconds the whole structure was awash in hissing, popping flame.
The ogre did not rise again.
Her horned nose raised to the sky, the blue dragon let out a mighty roar. She loved the sound of her own
voice thundering across the stricken land. She stepped forward, digging her talons deeply into the pile of
ogre bodies, now nothing more than carrion. A few more steps, and the dragon tensed her powerful leg
muscles, then catapulted herself into the air.
The dragon beat her wings furiously, accelerating as she climbed into the late summer sky. Clamor loved
speed almost as much as she loved soundтАФvelocity and volume consumed her. Faster and faster she flew,
fueled by a sudden rush of energy and exhilarated by the flow of cool Khalkist air across her dusky blue
hide. Urging her rider to hang on tight, the dragon banked steeply. Clamor dipped her long snout and folded
back her powerful wings, then shot toward the ground again like an elven arrow, skimming over the
blackened ogre village.
"What did you think of that, Jerne?"
Clamor was too pleased with her work to notice that her rider made no reply.
Surveying the destruction, the satisfied dragon rumbled deep in her throatтАФit was as close as she could
come to imitating the chuckle of her Dark Knight partner. She swept her great head back and forth, taking in
the remains of rough huts still smoking from the assault of her lightning breath, and crude stone dwellings
blasted to rubble. The smell of charred flesh curled around her nostrils and she noted the ogre remains,
scorched nearly beyond recognition, lying within the wreckage. Still more corpses were strewn about the
center of the village. But these bodies bore no marks at all. Baskets and tools lay next to them, dropped just
before their owners themselves fell. The pigs and lizards the villagers raised for food likewise had collapsed
in their pens.
"Nothing like the last time we were here, is it, Jerne?" Clamor asked coldly. Was it only a month ago that
the two of them, along with the rest of their wing of knights, had swept through the land of Blode to conscript
all able warriors for service in the Minions of Darkness? "So much has happened since then. Our invasion..."
Lost in her thoughts, the dragon circled around to overfly the village one last time. She spread her wings
wide to catch the air and coasted, reliving those weeks of triumph during the hottest summer in even a
dragon's memory. The armies of the Knights of Takhisis, made up of fearsome dark paladins and their
dragon partners, had swept across the continent in a conquest unparalleled in any of the Great Ages of
Ansalon. "Do you remember how we crushed every nation like twigs snapping beneath our feet? We taught
them the meaning of true honorтАФand fear! The entire land bowed before the glory of Her Dark Majesty..."
Clamor faltered, not wanting to recall the last chapter of that momentous summer. Instead, her heartbeat
pounding in her head, she pumped her wings against the sultry air and climbed again. After gaining altitude,
she craned her neck around for one last view of her handiwork. What looked like an ogre hunting party had
just entered the village. Clamor smirked as she imagined their amazement at finding their homesтАФ
A knight must not engage in combat with an unarmed opponent.
тАФnothing more than smoldering wrecks.
One of the hairy creatures looked up and pointed his club at her. The other ogres cowered, looking small
standing among the ruins and the dead. "Poor creatures!" she mocked aloud, then shot into the cool
whiteness of the clouds.
Poor Clamor!
The dragon winced sharply at a sudden pain in her right leg. The limbтАФblackened, withered, and
dripping with green ichorтАФdangled limply beneath her. She cursed the ogres far below, knowing that her
stop in Blode had aggravated the wound. The pain jerked Clamor's thoughts back to the battle in which she
had earned her injury. She felt her heartbeat quicken and her skin grew hot despite the cool southern winds