"Barbara Hambly - A Night with the Girls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Starhawk said, "Mother Pusbucket!" and stepped away.

"We don't know what did that." Battlesow had a small girl's sweet, lisping voice, faintly
absurd in most circumstances. It was hard with anger now. "He was lying with his back aga
the roots of an oak-tree, with his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other."

"I have them in the other room." Butcher stepped forward, covered over the scabbed and
puckered horror again. "We cleaned him up-he was still breathing-" Starhawk shuddered at
thought. "-But there was blood all over the weapons, old blood, like you find in week-old
corpses. You've seen some weird things, since you and Sun Wolf left the troop and started
mucking around with wizardry. You ever seen anything like that?"

"Sure." The Hawk gazed down at the outline of the distorted face, the sticky rings of
dabbled blood visible beneath the sheet. "Last time I saw the bottom of a boat that had been
bored through by worms. But those holes were the size of my finger, not my wrist."



"I've been asking." Butcher led the way along what had probably been a farm-path. The
sheathed glow of her lantern bobbed on charred tree-stumps, burned and ruined hedges, and
here and there the smashed-in ruins of a house or a barn. Horran was a prosperous little tra
port, Starhawk recalled from her own mercenary days, the major source of income for the
Prince of Chare. She'd heard in Kedwyr that the Prince had recently hired Ari of Wrynde-S
Wolfs successor to the command of the troop-to help convince the Horran town fathers not
declare independence. These, she guessed, would have been the garden farms that supplied
city dwellers with fresh vegetables and milk. The Mother only knew where their owners w
Probably sitting in the hills waiting to see who would win.

"According to latrine rumor, five outpost guards have disappeared in the past eight days
Butcher went on. "This morning I made a little tour of the perimeter-nearly getting shot by b
sides for my trouble-and found three bodies in the cellar of a farmhouse. They were too
chewed-up for me to tell much. Rats, mostly, but some of the wounds didn't look like rats, o
like any animal I've ever seen. They were jammed up under the floor-joists."

"That where we're going now?" Starhawk had her sword in her hand, watching all aroun
her, only half listening to what Butcher said, and to the heavy scrunch of Battlesow's boots
the path behind her. It would help a lot, she reflected, if she knew what she was listening fo
 It would help even more if Sun Wolf hadn't gone off to look for that little old lady in the
Kanwed Mountains who was supposed to braid love-charms out of moonlight. They were q
clearly up against magic here, and even Sun Wolfs unschooled powers would be of more u
than the swords of the doughtiest mercenaries. Love-charms were easily manufactured anyw
you just wrapped a piece of paper bearing the words "I love you" around ten or twelve gol
pieces, and there you were. In an emergency you could dispense with the paper.

"There's going to be a sortie through here tomorrow night," explained Battlesow's breath
little soprano. "There's a watchtower right over that way, guarding a postern. You're taking
your life in your hands anywhere in here by daylight."

"If there's something hiding out in these ruins," said Butcher, "I for one don't want to see
She stopped, holding up her hand for silence.