"Charles Ingrid - The Sand Wars 06 - Challenge Met" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ingrid Charles)

up—and if it had not been for those machines of war, she did not think they
would have made their transports.

They had had only one incident of any measure—and her own heart had
thudded as they had approached the transports, and she could see a familiar
face beyond the guards.

Baadluster had made a low sound in his throat as if he also recognized
Denaro, militant right hand of the Walker church. "You should have taken
that one out," he muttered to his emperor, "when you could have."

Jack acted as if he had not heard them, but his chin went up, and his gaze
met the flint dark one of the man standing beyond the Thraks. In a society
where biological years often did not match years lived, because of cold sleep
and other factors, men no longer measured actual ages. But they recognized
prime, and each of them was in his. Jack had once taught Denaro to be a
Knight, a wearer of battle armor.

In fear, Amber reached out and touched Jack's wrist, hoping to break
their stares, for Denaro was heavily armed despite the large, hand-carved
wooden cross hanging upon his chest. Her gesture had no effect and now
Denaro was speaking, his voice cutting through the crowd noise as if it were
a laser.

"You came back without him."

Jack stopped in his tracks and his escort slowed as well. A lesser man
would have been dwarfed by the battle armor, but he was not. "Denaro,"
Jack responded. "If I had gone with him, he would have come back with
me—or neither of us would have returned at all."

Denaro's eyes blinked slowly. He scorned to wear Walker overrobes, and
his muscles flexed under his miners' jumpsuit.

"Jack!" Amber warned, even as Denaro's hand moved, but the crowd
surged with a wild scream, as it caught her fear. The Thraks reared up,
chitin and carapace pressing against the softer flesh of the rioters.

Something came hurtling through the air at them, moving so quickly that
none of the guards could shift to catch it, even as Denaro shouted, "You
serve a murderer!"

Jack shrugged off Amber's hand and snatched the object up, curling his
fingers tightly about it.

As the tidal wave of security bore Denaro and the others away, the
Walker shouted a last time. "Find him," he said. "And tell the truth. Or I'll do
it for you."

Jack turned his hand over and opened his fist. A smaller, no less crude