"Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf 3 - Dark Hand of Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Chief wants."
"Books?" Thurg looked disgusted and dismayed as
Starhawk continued to fire orders, tightening cinches all the while.
"Thurg, Choirboy, you stay here ... "
"The name is Miris, thank you," retorted the youth with mock dignity. She
didn't recognize him-he must have joined the troop after she and the Wolf had
left it, almost exactly a year ago. Had it really been that long? With them
around her, it was as if that year had never been.
"They've got a couple hours' start on us," she went on, gauging the four
warriors with a practiced glance, deciding which could best be spared from the
upcoming fight. "We have to catch up with them before sunrise ... "
"You're going to need more than two swords," Choirboy pointed out. "You'll
have to steal back the horses anyway, so why take an empty saddle when you can
take a fighter?"
"Because I don't want one of my men left here alone, afoot." The words "my
men" came easily to her-hers to command and to answer for. "There's still
bands of shirdar around, sonny-you won't like what happens when they show up."
Past the horses, she could see the dark patches of blood-soaked sand where Sun
Wolf had been cornered and she hoped to the Mother that blood wasn't all his.
Scuffed tracks led away down the wash toward the desert-hoof prints, stumbling
footprints, a dark dribble of gore.
"He's right, Hawk," the Little Thurg said. "I'll manage."
She stood for a moment, reins gathered in her hand, sizing up the pair of
them. She knew the Little Thurg well-tough, short, in his early thirties, with
ten years of campaigning gouged into his hard little face, and obviously the
better man in a fight than the yearling boy. But that cut both ways. If a
roving band of vengeful shirdar did show up, Thurg could, as he'd said,
"manage." Choirboy-obviously to everyone but Choirboy-couldn't.
"Right." With a curt nod she stepped up into the saddle. "Watch your back,
Thurg."
"What do the shirdar want with the Chief, anyway?" Dogbreath demanded as they
reined away down the canyon. "You don't get them coming in this close to the
Middle Kingdoms on the warpath."
"Long story. I'll tell you that after you tell me what in the name of the
Seven Torments you gruts are doing down here." The coarse, vivid slang of the
mercenary armies slipped easily back to her tongue, like the ache in her
muscles-in her soldiering days she'd seldom been without a bruise or two-and
the habit of thinking in terms of many instead of one. Yet in another way
these dusty, grimy figures in their iron-plated leather jerkins, their bits of
spike and chain glinting coldly in the light of the lemon-colored moon, seemed
specters of a dream, called forth from her thoughts by the most casually
spoken of words. "I thought the troop would be on the road back to Wrynde by
this time of year."
"That," Dogbreath said, "is also a hell of a long story. We been to Pardle Sho
on the sniff for you and found the King's Citadel twittering like a cageful of
finches-you ever kicked a cageful of finches? Hours of fun. Some pook there
said you'd gone to some lost city out in the desert, but halfway there we met
the King and he allowed as how you'd lit out north with half the shirdar in
the desert on your tails ... "
"The Chief is supposed to have croaked a shirdar lord." Starhawk bent from her