"Clayton Emery - Netheril 02 - Dangerous Games" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

clamped onto the barbarian's unprotected thigh. Yowling with sudden pain, Sunbright batted the thing
from underhand, bowling it aside and slashing off four legs like brittle jackstraws. Yet the bug ripped a
hunk of flesh free as it tumbled to land, upside down and twitching. The bug's blood was thick,
reddish, pasty, and smelled acrid as burning garbage. Their alien smell filled the room, until Sunbright
felt like some fly blundered into a spiderweb. He tried not to think about being sucked dry of blood, or
being paralyzed and eaten alive ... slowly.
Screaming a northern challenge, he slammed his great sword between the jaws of a charging insect,
felt the hook hang up in the tough carapace of the skull. He stamped his boot into a face with
multifaceted eyes— then a bounding bug crashed on his back, sent him sprawling, knocking his breath
out.
Kneeling under the table, crushing a crystal goblet with his bare knee, Candlemas was not helpless,
but neither was he happy. How had these giant vermin come to infest his workshop? And how to
combat and survive them? Not that he had time to think, for a furious red insect with clacking jaws
raced straight at him.
Candlemas was no fighter, but he could hurl magic as instinctively as Sunbright could sling a
sword. The wizard's first reaction to these monsters was to push them away, and the spell he ripped off
did just that. Locking his two middle fingers under his thumb so first and fourth projected like horns,
he squalled the mystic gargle of a spell, invoked the name of Amaunator, and fired a wormhole at the
bug not three feet away.
Before the wizard's hands a vortex like a gray tornado spun into being, writhed and twisted in the
air, then sought the closest, densest object. With a tail like a bee's sting, the magic wormhole drilled
through the insect like an arrow through a mouse. The thick, rusty, hair-studded carapace was bored
open, and the mystic energy spiraled through the beast to erupt out its back end. In the process, the
bug's primitive guts were churned to paste and sucked into the magic maw to disappear Candlemas
himself knew not where. The stunned insect, half-deflated, collapsed onto the flagstones of the work-
shop.
But Candlemas yelled as another insect tore into his robe at the shoulder, seeking sweet meat and
rich red blood.
Sunbright saw his blood mix with the rusty ichor of the giant flea's. He'd been nipped on the arm,
gnawed behind his knee, and skinned along his scalp where it was shaved above his ears. A many-
legged menace scrabbled at his back, claws and mandibles shredding his thick goat-hide vest, which so
far had spared his spine. Another flea with a nest of sharp legs pinned his sword flat on the floor, while
a third scrabbled at his elbow. More were no doubt gnawing his boots.
Stupid to be eaten alive by bugs, the young man thought with disgust. Hardly the stuff of legend.
Angry with the fleas' mindless attack, and at Candlemas, who'd teleported them into the mess,
Sunbright let his anger grow, and harnessed it. With his free right hand, he hauled as well as he could
onto his belly and punched the first flea in the eye. The multifaceted orb, like a mosaic of tiny mirrors,
crunched under his fist. The bug was shoved backward and Sunbright could wrench up his sword. At
the same time, a keen sting along his back told him his vest was destroyed. Pain fanned his battle rage.
Kicking both feet, grunting with the effort, the barbarian rolled right, dumping the monster on his
back into the one at his elbow. Scrambling up, he found the two bugs idiotically gnashing at one
another. Swearing in his guttural, icy tongue, he sucked wind and slammed his sword down, shearing
through both bugs until his steel blade banged the floor and hashed the insects into a tangle of oozing
parts. These bugs weren't so hard to kill, he reasoned. Just bulky, toothy, and persistent.
Behind him clattered jars and retorts, and Sunbright glimpsed a bug straddling a table, smashing
crockery as it shuffled to leap on him. Sunbright slung his sword far back to slice the flea's head open
from side to side, but the thing leaped too quickly. The table was upset so the edge crashed on
Sunbright's toes, crushing them cruelly and making him yelp. Jerking his foot free, he made to kick the
bug back to gain swinging room.
But the fearsome beast leapt into the air almost to the barbarian's face, and spat.