"Elliott,.Kate.-.Crown.Of.Stars.4.-.Child.Of.Flame" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

"Dirt is blind, otherwise you'd never get inside. Come on." Ivar waded over to the conscious Lion.” Friend, can you walk?"
"So I can, a bit, lad. But Dedi, here—" The old Lion got suddenly hoarse.
"We'll carry him," said Ivar hastily.” But let's get him out of that mail first. Ermanrich, give me a hand, will you? Baldwin, you help the Lion in, and keep ahead of him in case there's any pits."
"Pits? What if I fall into a bottomless hole?"
"Baldwin, we haven't got time! Here." He found the unconscious Lion's sword sheath.” Take this sword and use it to feel your way forward."
Amazingly, Baldwin obeyed without further objection. He helped the old Lion to his feet and steadied the soldier as he hobbled to the tunnel.
It wasn't easy to get mail off an unconscious man.” I think he's already dead," Ermanrich whispered several times, but in the end they wrestled him out of his armor.
Nor was it easy to haul him in through the tunnel even without his armor. He was a big man, well muscled, so badly injured that
he was a complete dead weight. Luckily, the water did not rise past their thighs before an upward slope brought them shivering out of the water onto dry ground. The weight of the hill pressed above them. Dirt stung Ivar's nostrils, and his mutilated hand burned with pain.
"Thank God," said Baldwin out of the darkness. Ivar and Ermanrich set down the unconscious soldier, none too gently, and Ivar straightened up so quickly that he banged his head hard against the stone ceiling. The pain made tears flow, and in a way he did want just to sit down and cry because everything had been such a disaster. He really had thought they'd win the battle. Prince Bayan's and Princess Sapientia's troops had looked so magnificent arrayed against the Quman army, and even the dreaded Margrave Judith had ridden out with such a strong host that it seemed impossible that everything had fallen apart, including their line. Prince Ekkehard had vanished in the maelstrom, his companions were scattered or dead, and they were all that was left. Probably they were the last remnant of Bayan's army left on this side of the river: two badly injured soldiers, four novice monks, and one lost nun.
The battle had started very late in the afternoon, and now night settled over them. Two hours at the most separated them from that glorious place where they'd waited at the front of the right flank, ready to sweep into battle. It just didn't seem possible everything had gone wrong so fast.
But meanwhile, someone had to go back to make sure that the Quman hadn't followed them under the hill. Cold, wet, and shivering, Ivar braced himself for the shock of wading back into the water that drowned the lower reaches of the tunnel. His leggings already clung to him like icy leeches, and his toes had gone numb from cold.
A hand snaked out of the darkness to grab at his sleeve.” Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?" Baldwin asked in a hoarse whisper.
"Nay. It's better if I go alone. If something happens to me, it'll take you and Ermanrich and Lady Hathumod to carry the injured Lion."
Baldwin leaned closer. Despite the long weeks of travel in harsh conditions, the terror of a losing battle waged as afternoon gave way to dusk, and the desperation of their scramble over the ancient earthworks, Baldwin's breath was still as sweet as that of a lord sitting in pleasant splendor in his rose garden, drinking a posset of mead flavored with mint.” I'd rather be dead than go on without you."
"We'll all be dead if the Quman find that armor and figure out that we're hiding in this tunnel. Just stay here, Baldwin, I beg you."
Behind, in the stygian blackness, Sigfrid's gentle voice fell and rose in a melismatic prayer. Somehow, the darkness warped time. Hadn't it just been moments ago that they had stumbled upon that hidden opening? It seemed like hours.
Beneath Sigfrid's quiet prayer Ivar heard Hathumod murmuring words he couldn't quite make out. She was answered, in turns, by monosyllabic grunts from the old Lion and whispered questions from Ermanrich. He could not see, not even Baldwin, who stood right next to him. He felt them, though, huddled together like frightened rats under the weight of earth and rock.
He took the unconscious Lion's sword from Baldwin and tested the grip with his good hand, squeezed and relaxed until the leather grip gave enough to fit the curve of his hand. With gritted teeth, he surged forward into the water and shuddered all over again as the tunnel floor plunged down and the icy water enveloped his legs.
With the sword drawn tightly against his left leg, Ivar approached the entrance in relative silence. He smelled the distant stench of the battlefield. Night crows cried far away, alerting their cousins to the banquet. A pebble rolled under his boot, and he grunted softly, balancing himself. The wound on his right hand scraped stone. He caught back a gasp of pain as a hot trickle of blood bled free. Pain stabbed up his hand, and he stumbled forward. The stumps of his missing fingers, shorn off right at the second knuckle, jabbed into a moist tapestry of moss. Tears streamed from his eyes and made salty runnels over his lips. After a while, the pain subsided enough for him to think.
He had reached the entrance. Cautiously, with his good hand, he fingered the tendrils of moss which streaked the crumbling entrance. Behind this curtain he waited, listening. He couldn't see anything, not even the sky. It seemed as dark beyond the curtain
concealing the tomb's entrance as it had deep within. The heavy scent of damp and earth and wet moss shrouded his world.
But he could hear the distant murmur of a host moving, hooves, shouts, one poor soul screaming, the detritus of movement that betrays two armies unwinding one from the other as the battle ebbs and dies.
From close by, he heard a grunt, a low breathing mutter.
The sword shifted in his hand before he was aware he had changed his stance. The Lion's discarded armor spoke with that voice granted to all things born of metal: when hands disturbed it, it replied in a chiming voice.
Just as he had feared: a Quman soldier had found the discarded armor.
He lunged through the curtain. The Quman soldier had wings curling up above his back where he bent over the mail and helmet. Ivar ducked down to get under the wooden contraption. Just as the other man spun, he thrust. The short sword caught the winged soldier just under his leather-scaled shirt. With his wounded arm he reached out and wrapped his forearm around the man's head and with all his weight pulled him in through the entrance. Wood frames snapped against the lintel as Ivar fell into the water with the Quman landing face first in his lap. The sword drove to the hilt between the enemy's ribs.
Water licked Ivar's lips as he pressed the man down, holding him under. The man twisted one way and then the other, trying to raise his head out of the water, but Ivar countered each movement j with a sideways push on the hilt of the sword. Steel grated against I bone, causing the warrior to convulse and lose whatever advantage he had gained. His black hair floated like tendrils of moss. Ivar tasted blood in the water. All at once, the Quman went limp.
Ivar shoved the dead man deeper into the pool and staggered to his feet. His body ached from the cold. He dipped a hand in the water to scrub at his face, to wash the taint of blood away, but all around him the pool seemed polluted by the life that had drained into it. He carefully slipped past the moss and found clear water outside.
Lightning streaked the sky, followed by a sharp thunderclap. A voice called out a query. On the earthworks beyond, a man's shape, distorted by wings, reared up against the night sky, questing: an other Quman soldier, looking for his comrade. Ivar's position at the base of the ditch, within the shadow of the lintel, veiled him. A moment later the shadow moved on, dropping out of sight behind the earthworks.
A drizzle of rain wet Ivar's cheeks. With a swelling roar, the river raged in the distance like a multitude of voices raised all at once, but he couldn't see it, nor could he see stars above. A bead of rain wound down his nose and, suspended from its tip, hung there for the longest time just as he was suspended, unwilling to move for fear of giving himself away.
Finally he set down his sword, rolled up the mail shirt, wrapping it tight with a belt, and looped the helmet strap over his shoulder. With the sword in his good hand and his injured hand throbbing badly enough to give him a headache, he felt his way back under the lintel. Gruesome wings brushed his nose, one splintered wooden frame scraping his cheek as feathers tickled his lips. Outside, rain started to fall in earnest. Thunder muttered in the west. If they were lucky, rain would obscure the signs of their passage and leave them safe for a day or two, until the Quman moved on. Then they could sneak out and make their way northwest, on the trail of Prince Bayan's and Princess Sapientia's retreating army.
In his heart, he knew it was a foolish hope. The Quman had scouts and trackers. There was no way a ragged band of seven, four of them wounded and most of them unable to fight, could get through the Quman lines. But they had to believe they could. Otherwise they might as well lie down and die.
Why would they have been granted the vision of the phoenix if God had meant for them to die in such a pointless manner?
Baldwin was waiting for him where the tunnel floor sloped upward and out of the water.
"Come see," said Baldwin sharply.” Gerulf got a fire going."
"Gerulf?"
"That's the old Lion." Baldwin tugged him onward, steadying him when he stumbled. Weariness settled over Ivar's shoulders. He shivered convulsively, soaked through. He wanted nothing more than to drop right where he stood and sleep until death, or the phoenix, came for him. Or maybe one would bring the other, it was hard to think with the walls wavering around him.
Strange sigils had been carved into the pale stone, broad rocks
set upright and incised with the symbols of demons and ancient gods who plagued the people of elder days: four-sided lozenges, spirals that had neither beginning nor end, broad expanses of hatching cut into the rock as though straw had been pressed crisscross into the stone.
Yet how could he see at all, deep in the heart of a tomb? With Baldwin's help, he staggered forward until the tunnel opened into a smoky chamber lit by fire. He stared past his companions, who were huddled around a torch. The chamber was a black pit made eerie by flickering light. He could not see the ceiling, and the walls were lost to shadow. He sneezed.
Just beyond the smoking torch, a stone slab marked the center of the chamber. A queen had been laid to rest here long ago: there lay her bones, a pale skeleton asleep in the torchlight, its hollow-eyed frame woven with strands of rotting fabric and gleaming with precious gold that had fallen around the skull and into the ribs. Gold antlers sprang into sight as Gerulf shifted the torch to better investigate his comrade's wound.
"You shouldn't have lit a fire in a barrow!" cried Ivar, horrified.” Everyone knows a fire will wake the unholy dead!"
Frail Sigfrid sat at the unconscious Lion's head, nearest to the burial altar. He looked up with the calm eyes of one who has felt God's miraculous hands heal his body.” Don't fear, Ivar." The voice itself, restored to him by a miracle, was a reproof to Ivar's fear.” God will protect us. This poor dead woman bears us no ill will." He indicated the half-uncovered skeleton, then bent forward as the old Lion spoke to him in a low voice.
But how could Sigfrid tell? Ivar had grown up in the north, where the old gods still swarmed, jealous that the faith of the Unities had stolen so many ripe souls from their grasp. There was no telling what malice lay asleep here, or when it might wake.
Ermanrich and Hathumod sat together, hands clasped in a cousinly embrace. Both had lost a great deal of flesh. How long ago it seemed when the four youths and Hathumod had served together as novices at Quedlinhame, yet truly it wasn't more than a year ago that they had all been cast out of the convent for committing the unforgivable sin of heresy.
Baldwin circled the stone altar and its dead queen, crouching to grasp one of the gold antlers. The light touch jostled the skeleton.
Precious amber beads scattered down among the bones, falling in a rush.
"Don't disturb the dead!" hissed Ivar. But Baldwin, eyes wide, reached right in-to where strands of desiccated wool rope, whose ends were banded with small greenish-metal rods, curled around the pelvis. His hand closed over a small object, a glint of blue.
"Look!" he cried, with his other hand lifting a stone mirror out of the basin made by her pelvic bones. The polished black surface still gleamed. As Ivar took a panicked step forward to stop Baldwin from further desecration, he saw his movement reflected in that mirror.