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

The wight froze.

Pox rot it, thought Starhawk, it heard us.

It was on its feet then and turning, not towards them but in the direction of the black
crumbled debris of what had been the main farm building, as two figures emerged from the
darkness. One stepped forward, lifting a halberd-a woman, the Hawk identified it, by the
movement more than by the dim glimpse of trailing braids-and the wight fell on the newcom
knocking her down and aside with the force of its rush. The second figure, also female thou
both were clad as men in breeches, tunics, and boots, sprang to her companions defense,
slashing with another halberd, a weapon whose length and leverage were often chosen to
compensate for a woman's lighter weight and shorter reach.

Drawn off its first victim, the wight whirled upon the second, and by that time Battlesow
Butcher, and Star-hawk had reached the struggling group. Disregarding all Starhawk's
warnings about dismemberment Battlesow plowed in like a demented woodchopper on
hashish, Daffodil rising and falling in time to battle-cries like the shrill barking of a very sm
dog. Wriggling, serpent-sized maggots flew and splacked on the damp earth; one
brown-gummed bony hand whirled away and crawled spider-wise into the ruins. Mewing a
pawing, the wight backed off and fled; Starhawk and Butcher had to grab Battlesow to keep
from following it into the darkness.

"Stinking thing." Battlesow spit after it. "That'll teach it."

"It won't," pointed out Starhawk. "They don't learn. They just come back. Indefinitely.
Whatever you do to them, they incorporate into themselves. Absorb it, and make it part of t
attack."

"I was married to a man like that once," remarked Butcher.

They turned back. The tubulate, serpent-like growths had already crawled away from the
ruined dooryard. One of the two newcomer women gave over trying to help her friend to he
feet and sprang up herself, grabbing her halberd and bracing herself for another attack.

"Relax," said Starhawk, crossing to them and stopping just out of halberd-range, not that
thought either woman capable of doing much damage. She sheathed her sword and her dagg
and held up her hands to show them empty. "That thing yours?"

The two women-one standing, the other, whom the wight had first borne down, scrambli
painfully to her feet-looked at one another, then at Starhawk and her friends. The older wom
scrawny as a cut-rate chicken a poor housewife would have to boil for most of a day, said
length, "In a manner of speaking. Are you all right, Elia?"

"More or less." Her friend brushed filth and soot from her sleeves, wiped the spattered
slime of the wight's mouth off her face, to reveal a plain, square-jawed, motherly countenan
She leaned her halberd against the wall near her and held out her hand to Starhawk. "I am E
representative to the town council of Horran from the Seven Streets district. This is Teryne

"Starhawk of Wrynde. Butcher," she nodded back at the others who still watched, weapo