"part3" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keith Brooke - Lord of Stone)

The chill in the mountain breeze went through Bligh like a
bullet. He wished Rayner would hurry, so they could move on
again.

Instead, Rayner withdrew a clay bottle of the local wine from
his back-bag. He pulled the cork with his teeth and took a
long swig before passing the bottle to the others.

Suddenly, a dark shape passed between them and the sun and
Bligh flinched.

"A lammergeier," said Panniker. "'Old Man of the Mountains',
we call him."

Bligh looked and he saw a huge, dark bird coming back for
another view of the four soldiers. From the dark plumage of
its body a creamy, aristocratic head emerged with a blaze of
vivid orange at the throat and furious, fiery eyes that
stared and stared as it soared slowly by.

"They scavenge just like the vultures of the plain,"
continued Panniker. "But if he sees a mountain goat the old
man's just as likely to drive it off the cliff."

From the look in the beast's eyes, Bligh would not be
surprised if it had been considering doing just the same to
them. He had not thought such a large predator could still
survive, with all the prey and cover destroyed by the
fighting.

There would be plenty to scavenge, he supposed.

They walked for a distance over the rough hillside and then
came to a halt on a promontory which loomed out over the
ravine. "We passed below here in the night," said Rayner,
struggling to regain his breath. "See - " he pointed " - the
track?"

Bligh looked down and saw a rough road about two hundred feet
below. He hadn't realised in the darkness how they had
actually travelled for some time along the valley bottom
itself. He looked across and saw that this was the bottleneck
they had passed through, shortly before arriving at their
sector. The enemy defences were about a hundred yards from
the road.

"The Army have never been able to hold the road for long,"
said Rayner. "Taking it is easy, but there's a UPP
emplacement just out of sight across there. Every time
they've taken the road, we've just mortared them from the