"Timothy Zahn - The Green and the Gray" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

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The Green and the Gray

hopelessness.
She could feel her strength ebbing away now, her arms falling loosely to her sides, her knees starting
to buckle. Vaguely, she sensed the second Warrior gripping her under her arms, supporting her so
that the first could finish the job. White spots were dancing in front of her eyes, and the distant
streetlight reflected on his face seemed to be fading away. Did that mean the end was near? Feeling
like a dying flower wilting in his grip, she closed her eyes.
Even through the closed lids she saw the brilliant burst of light. The grip on her throat abruptly
eased, and she had a vague sense of the anguish swirling around her suddenly replaced with surprise
and consternation. There was a distant-sounding shoutтАФthe word Betrayal!тАФ
The clutching hands were suddenly torn away from her throat, and she heard a gasp as something
threw the Warrior to the ground. Even as she fought to suck air into her lungs, the hands that had
been supporting her let go, and she felt herself collapsing toward the grass. Another arm reached out
from somewhere, grabbing her around the waist. For a moment her rescuer seemed to totter; and
then they were on the move, Melantha's jaw and neck bouncing painfully as he ran with her across
the grass. The spots of her near-suffocation were fading away, but to her surprise she found she still
couldn't see anything. The streetlights that had been blazing earlier from Riverside Drive had gone
completely dark.
"She's gone!" a deep Gray voice boomed from behind her.
There was a flurry of movement from that direction, footsteps and shouts and voices calling to her
mind. Her forward motion was abruptly halted, and she felt herself being clutched closer to her
rescuer's body as he began to climb the wall the Grays had been hanging onto a few minutes earlier.
She tensed as he climbed, waiting for the inevitable shouts of discovery and the sounds of pursuit.
But all the activity seemed to be moving away from her, either deeper into the darkness of the park
or back toward the garden and the stone steps. A moment later she and her rescuer reached the top of
the wall and the upper promenade, and once again she found her chin bouncing painfully against his
shoulder as he ran silently along the ground.
"You okay?" a gruff voice murmured in her ear. "Melantha?"
It took two tries to get any words out through her half-paralyzed throat. "I'm okay," she wheezed.
Her voice was the voice of a stranger. "WhoтАФ?"
"It's Jonah," he said; and this time, she recognized the voice. "Don't try to talk."
Melantha stiffened. That last word had been more grunted than spoken, and for the first time she
noticed how labored his breathing sounded. Lifting her left hand from the arm still wrapped around
her waist, she carefully touched his chest with her fingertips.
And jerked away as she touched wetness. "Jonah!"
"Don't try to talk," he said again, his breathing sounding even more ragged. "It's okay."


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The Green and the Gray

He slowed to a walk, his head turning back and forth as if taking his bearings. A moment later he
came to a complete stop, letting her slip a bit so that her feet were touching the ground. She stretched
her legs, trying to take some of her own weight away from him. But her knees were too weak to give
any support, and a terrible fatigue was beginning to wash over her. In the distance behind them she
could feel the calls of chaos and consternation and growing anger. "This... isn't right," she managed