"Zimmer,.Paul.Edwin.-.Ingulf.The.MadUC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zimmer Paul Edwin)

Paul Edwin Zimmer
Forest-Elves, had blundered into a poor fisher village and there learned that a month had gone out of his life during the night he had spent in the Sea-Elves* city.
Not once in that time had Airellen's face left his mind; not once had he slept without dreaming of her; not once had he halted in his mad quest for deeds to do, that Dorialith might make good his promise.
He saw her eyes in every sunset, her shape behind every tree. A patch of blackness on birch bark would suddenly seem to shape into her hair, and he would see her face framed in it, feel her eyes upon him. . . .
Blundering ever deeper inland, he wandered at last out of Galinor over the hills south, through the Elf woods, and on into the Forest of Demons itself.
And always it seemed that some malign fate had come between him and the hope of his heart, and more and more bitter he became, until he felt that all the world had joined to mock him, and hold him from his love.
Lost in the forest, he blundered ever deeper. . . .
Another scream. Ingulfs heart twisted. Could Airellen be here, and in danger?
He began to run, blundering clumsily through brambles, his heart leaping with crazy hope and fear.
The scream died away, and Ingulf could hear only his own feet, crashing on leaves, and the frantic pounding of his heart and sobbing of his breath.
Where had the scream come from? He paused to breathe, trying to listen, while his eyes scanned the forest.
Surely the trees must hate him, surely there was some malign fate in the world that would not allow him to aid another in pain, mocking him with underbrush and echoes, and baffling twists between trees, and hills that cut off vision worse than sea-fog.
In the open ocean it would only be a matter of waiting for the waves to move. But where in these tangled trees could she be?
Even if it was not Airellen, somewhere a woman was suffering pain and fear. . . .
Was the scream only to mock him? Or was he being lured into a trap of some kind?
Ingulf the Mad
33
The screaming sounded again, and mingled with it, men's voices shouting and the clamor of steel.
Ingulfs fingers clenched on the haft of his great war-flail, the flat iron blade dangling loose, ready to swing in its deadly arc. His ears hunted the woods, tying to find direction among the clustered trees and occasional maddening echoes.
Gathering up his flail again, holding the blade tight to the shaft, he began moving slowly to the left. The sound seemed to come from there. Again the woman screamed, and now it seemed louder, and Ingulf began to run, adjusting Frostfire's scabbard in his belt with his left hand.
Suddenly he blundered into a trail, and went running along it, hearing, louder, the battering of steel ahead. He came to the brow of a knoll and looked down into a ravine.
The very land conspired against him! Why did fate hate him so?
He ran down the slope. Roots clawed at his feet. Ahead, the trail led uphill into tall pines with wind booming in their boughs.
Crashing through a screen of leaves came the glittering figure of a man in armor, reeling back onto the pine needles at the rim of the rise, to fall sprawling down the bank, smearing the needles with blood.
Another man reeled over the knoll, clutching at a dripping red leg, and slid, shrieking, down the hill. Other men appeared, under a shimmer of swords, the drumming of their shields all but drowned by the wind in the pines.
Ingulf sprang forward- Here were those he had come to aid!
Another mail-clad corpse pitched down the slope, and behind Ingulf glimpsed a tall blond figure, clad in smoky green plaid, sword crusted with blood. One of the forest savages, Ingulf thought.
Roots caught at Ingulfs feet. He saw men running down the hill as they fought, but he had to look down at the roots and loose earth that were trying to trip him, to keep him from the heroic deeds that were his only hope of love and sanity. . . .
Armored men were running and shouting; one screamed piteously, trying to crawl away, dragging behind him the spurting ruin of a leg.
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Paul Edwin Zimmer
Ingulf sprang between the wounded man and the tall, deadly, unarmored figure that bounded toward him.
The dark iron blade of the flail flew free, spinning out above the blond man's shield. The blood-crusted sword lashed into its path.
Most blades would have shattered under that terrible stroke; but this one held. The steel bent like a bow, and tore itself from the hand that held it. Ingulf stared. The blond man dodged back, disarmed but unhurt.
"Islander!" he shouted. "Is it mad you are, or a traitor, that you aid slave-hunters out of Sarlow?" Ingulf froze: the wheel of his flail faltered in its spin.
"Duck, you fool!" the blond man shouted, and Ingulf leaped to the side, his flail whirling around him as he turned, to drive down on the spear-shaft that pierced the air where he had stood. The spinning iron snapped the thick wood shaft as though it had been a twig.
He let the tip smash into the earth, showering pine needles and dirt. A convulsive swirl of his shoulders jerked it aloft again, its spin reversed. Mail-rings clashed deafeningly, and the man behind the spear staggered back, coughing blood from rib-pierced lungs.
The blond man was scrambling for his sword, and the armored men rushed, swords raised.
Ingulf hurled himself into their path, the flattened iron bar a deadly wheel. In the madness of battle, he could forget, and here at last was an evil on which he could vent the seething anger and hatred that boiled within him; to fight back against the unjust world and avenge his ruined life. . . .
The bare foot of dull edge at the very tip of the flattened iron went through a man's neck as easily as a sharp blade might have; its terrible weight whirred around again, spraying blood, and a helmet crumpled under the stroke.
Slavers backed away as the madman drove among them, his flail lashing, humming in the air, and his face twisted and his eyes wild.
There was a sudden loud crashing, a rending of wood, and thin branches and leaves showered on Ingulfs head and shoulders, as the handle of the flail tugged at his hand.
Ingulf the Mad
35
Ingulfs foes had backed under the low branches of a tree; the chain and the long iron bar were tangled in shattered boughs.
Ingulf let go the handle. Sneering, a slaver stabbed with his sword.
Ingulfs leg crumpled: his hand flew to Frostfire's hilt as the point passed over his head.
A cold, glassy wheel of flame blossomed as Frostfire whipped from its scabbard, ripping through mail-rings as easily as cloth: red threads rippled on the shimmering wheel of steel.
Then Ingulf sprang up, past the toppling, bleeding figure, and red drops flew from his sword.
Blades rang: blood reddened ring-mail. Harried, milling like sheep, mail-clad shapes fled, and suddenly Ingulf and the other man were eyeing each other across a slope strewn with shattered corpses.