"Brian Jacques - Redwall 05 - Salamandastron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacques Brian)

Migroo the stoat pulled aside a heap of dried moss. "Chief, look!"

Two badger babes lay huddled together, mewling and shiv-

Brian Jacques

ering as they stuck their heads up, lips pursed in a plea for mother's milk.

Migroo laughed. "That one looks like his father, but this other one, Chief,
it's white. I thought all badgers had stripes."
Ferahgo tickled their nose tips with his knifepoint. "They're both males. One
is a proper badger, the other is an albino. They might not be orphans today if
their parents had not resisted me."

Migroo watched the point of Ferahgo's knife. "What're yen goin* t' do with
'em?"

The Assassin shrugged and sheathed his blade. "Nothing. The winter will take
care of Urthound's whelps."

Fondling the round gold medallion he had taken from the neck of Unbound,
Ferahgo gave one last glance around.

"Now nobeast in the Southwest is left to oppose me. Come on, my Corpsemakers!"

The weasel swept out into the wintering forestlands with his band, a smile
still fixed in his beautiful light blue eyes.

Behind him in the ruins of the den the two badger babes, one striped, the
other pure white, snuggled against the cold body of their mother. They made
pitiful little noises, waiting for her to wake and comfort them. Outside the
snowflakes blew gustily between tree and bush, chased by the soughing wind.

It was cold.

But not as cold as the smile on the face of Ferahgo the Assassin.

BOOK ONE

Questors and Runaways

Many and many a long seasdn'had come and gone since that fateful midwinter day
in the Southwest Lands.

The only sound disturbing the stillness of a high summer noontide was that of
seabirds plaintively calling as they wheeled and circled overhead. The
vastness of the sea lay becalmed, without blemish of wave or white-crested
roller, still as a millpond, mirroring the faded blue of a cloudless sky.
Obscured in its own heat haze, the sun blushed forth a radiant golden wash,
tinting sand and rock with a soft amber glow.