"Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf 2 - Witches of Wenshar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

whine of a drawn sword, and a voice thick with liquor yelled, "Rot your
eyes, you scum-sucking swine ... !"
The Wolf was already scrambling up over the rocks in the
darkness.
Without a word passing between them, Starhawk knew what the
plan was and moved forward at a soundless run toward the barely
visible bend in the dark road. From the other side of the overhanging
rocks, she heard the searing ring of steel on steel and a man's voice
shouting, "Help! MURDER!" The scrub along the edge of the road
would give more away by its noise than it would conceal in that pitchy
dark; Starhawk felt, rather than actually saw, the wide bay between the
boulders to her right, sensed violent movement somewhere in the
Stygian blackness, and heard the sounds of struggle.
A white blur on the ground turned out to be the face and hands of
a dead man amid a stench of spilled blood. She sprang noiselessly over
him. Ahead of her, another man was backed to the gray-black front of
a massive boulder-pale face, pale hands, the white V of a shirt visible
through an unlaced doublet. Ill-defined forms danced before him.
Starlight glinted on steel. Starhawk ran one of his black-cloaked
attackers through the body before the man had time to realize what was
happening.
He let out a gasping death scream, and the other assailants turned
upon her in a body.
Then, from the top of the rocks, there was a berserker howl, and
Sun Wolf was among them. Starhawk caught barely a glimpse of him
as he dropped into the darkness. She found by instinct the shoulder of
another dark form near to her, caught the thick cloth of his cloak, and
shoved her sword up under his ribs as he turned toward the new threat.
As she pulled the blade clear in a sticky gush of hot blood over her
hand, she glimpsed the white robe beneath the cloak, already staining
with the welling blood. Shirdar, she thought, turning and ducking the
slash of a curved tulwar, cutting at breast level, and parrying steel that
whined within inches of her face. The victim of the ambush had sailed
into the fray, fighting like a drunken man with yells of fury. From the
road behind them, hooves thudded and lanterns swayed in the
darkness; reflected light showed Starhawk the gleam of a sword, and
she cut in the darkness where the body would be. Her blade met
nothing; the man had turned, and she heard the scrunch of his soft
boots on gravel as he fled.
Beside her, the man they'd rescued was yelling, "Here! To
me!"-with, Starhawk thought wryly, considerable optimism about
whose side the reinforcements were on. A blue burst of witchlight
flared in the darkness, the ghostly blaze turning Sun Wolf's craggy
features and gore-slimed sword blade into a hashish vision of some
barbarian berserker god. He had evidently decided that darkness was
no longer to his advantage. By the faint St. Elmo's fire, Starhawk could
see the last attackers fleeing into the shadows of the rocks, leaving their
dead stretched upon the thin dust of the ground. Men and women in
some kind of dark green livery studded with smoked steel were urging
their horses down from the road, springing from their saddles to dart in