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

forward.
Fire, he thought blindly, fire all around my body ... Just a few seconds more,
damn it!

Starhawk saw the flames roar up in a wall around the Wolf's fallen body and
thought, Illusion. She hoped to the Mother it was an illusion, anyway. She
drove in her spurs and yelled to Choirboy, "It isn't real ... !"
It looked damn real.
Beside her in the din-the shirdar she'd shot was still partially alive, buried
under a shroud of insects and screaming like a mechanical noisemaker-she heard
Choirboy yell, and from the tail of her eye saw the panic in his face at the
sight of the flames.
"It's not real, dammit!"
But panicky uncertainty had claimed him. The youth hauled on the reins,
dragging his horse to a skidding halt among the ants. Starhawk felt her own
mount veer at the sight and heat of the blaze and lashed it brutally with the
quirt, driving it straight toward the shimmering wall. Choirboy's horse reared
and twisted as the ants, fully aroused now and covering the sandy knoll in a
seething blackish-red carpet, poured up over its hooves and began tearing the
flesh of its fetlocks. Choirboy screamed again as the frenzied animal flung
him; then the Hawk saw no more, her own mount plunging through the pale circle
of flame.
She hauled rein with the Wolf nearly under the hooves. The heat beat upon her
as if she'd ridden into a furnace, and she didn't dare dismount. The flame
seemed to pour straight up out of the ground, as if the dirt itself were
burning. She screamed, "Get on your feet, you stinking oaf! You waiting for a
goddamned mounting block or something?!"
Reeling like a drunken man, Sun Wolf half rose. She grabbed a flailing arm,
nails digging hard enough to bring blood from the bare and filthy flesh-she
could only spare one hand from the dithering horse's rein. She pitched her
voice as she'd pitch a battle yell over the greedy roar of the flames, the
screaming and yells of the shirdar up among the rocks. "Get your arse in the
goddam saddle or I'll goddam drag it out of here!" Through the bloody curtain
of his ragged hair she could see that his one good eye was closed, his face
white as a dying man's beneath a layer of grime. Somehow he got a bare foot in
the stirrup and heaved; she hooked her arm under his shoulder and hauled with
all her strength, dumping him over the saddlebow like a killed pig. Then she
drove in the spurs and plunged for the hills, the circle of surrounding fire
sweeping after them like the head of a comet trailing flame, leaving no burn
upon the ground.
Fifty feet farther on, the fire flicked suddenly out of existence, and she
knew Sun Wolf had fainted.
In the rocks Dogbreath and Firecat joined them, leading four shirdar horses in
a string. The Hawk glanced back swiftly at the teeming knoll and Dogbreath
shook his head and gestured with the bow on the back of his saddle. She
shivered, but knew he was right. He and the Cat had been busy in the rocks
dealing with the rest of the shirdar. By the time they'd been able to get to
Choirboy-running, rolling, tearing frenziedly at the gnawing carpet of ants
that had already eaten out his eyes and ears and brain-shooting him was all
they could have done.