"Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 03 - The Dragon on the Border" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Dafydd recased his bow. Calmly, he put it with his recapped quiver back in their places on his saddle,
then remounted his own horse. Together they approached the place where the armored figure first hit had
fallen.

He was strangely hard to see; and when they came up to where he should be, they saw why. Brian
crossed himself again.

“Would you care to be the one to look more closely at it?” Brian asked Jim hesitantly. “-Seeing it may
be magic?”

Jim nodded. Now that his first fear was over, unlike the two with him he was more intrigued than awed
by what he had just seen. He swung down from his horse and approached what lay upon the ground, to
squat down beside it. It was a combination of chain and steel plate, with padding beneath.

Dafydd’s arrow was buried in the chest plate, up to the feathers, and the point stuck out through the
back armor. It was much like the armor Jim wore himself; but somewhat old-fashioned. His eye for
armor was developing, and he was able to notice that not all of the armor parts matched with each other
the way they should. Dafydd pulled his arrow on through the backplate to recover it, and shook his head
over the damage this had done to the shaft’s feathers. Jim stood up.

“Two things are certain,” he said. “One is that the arrow stopped him-it looks, permanently. Secondly,
whoever or whatever was in the armor isn’t there now.”

“Could it be some damned souls from hell,” asked Brian, crossing himself again, “sent against us?”

“I doubt it,” answered Jim. He came to a sudden decision. “We’ll take the armor with us.”

He had got into the habit of carrying a coil of light rope, along with the other gear on his horse. It had
turned out to be useful a number of times. He used it now to tie together the loose pieces of armor and
clothing; and made a bundle which he fastened behind his saddle with the other goods his horse carried
there.

Dafydd said nothing.

“Now the mists have thickened,” said Brian, looking around them. “Soon it will be thick fog and we’ll
not see which way to go. What do we now?”

“Let’s go on a little farther,” said Jim.

They remounted and went on a little way, while the fog-for it was really fog now-thickened. But after a
bit, they could feel a damp breeze, cold on the right side of their faces; and they noticed that the ground
was beginning to slope in that direction, rather steeply.

They turned their horses to the slope and rode down. After about five minutes they rode out from under
the fog, which now became a low-lying cloud bank above their heads, and found themselves on the
shingle of a pebble and rock-strewn seashore. The cloud had lifted. Perhaps five hundred yards to their
left, up the bank, was a dark peel tower-a common form of fortress to be found on the Scottish border.
It rose from the shingle like a single black finger, upright, with some outbuildings attached to its base.

It sat right above the edge of a cliff face falling vertically to the creamy surf that beat on the shore, but