"Greg Keyes - Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone 2 - The Charnel Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keyes J Gregory)

“From what I’ve seen,” Ehawk began, “Brother Martyn can hear a snake breathe over the next hill. I
haven’t such ears, and at this moment hear little. But sir, that’s strange of itself. There ought to be

more birds singing.“
“Saint Rooster’s balls,” Oneu scoffed, “what do y’mean? There’s one warbling right now, so loud I can
scarce hear myself.”

“Yes, sir,” Ehawk replied. “But that ‘un is an etechakichuk , and

they—“

“In the king’s tongue, boy, or in Almannish,” snapped a dour, sallow-faced man. He wore robes of the
same color as Martyn’s. “Don’t gabble at us in your heathen language.”

That was Gavrel, another of the five monks traveling with the party. His face looked as if it had been cut
into an apple and left to dry.

Ehawk didn’t like Gavrel much.

“Mind your own tongue, Brother Gavrel,” Sir Oneu said mildly. “I’m the one speaking to our young guide,
not you.”

Gavrel glared at the reprimand, but he did not challenge the

knight.

“You were saying, m‘ lad Ehawk?”

“I believe you call ‘em crow-woodpeckers,” Ehawk replied.

“Nothing frightens them.”

“Ah.” Oneu frowned. “Than let’s have quiet, while Brother Martyn listens more closely.”

Ehawk did as he was told, straining his own ears to the limits, feeling an unaccustomed chill as the hush of
the forest sank in. It was

strange.

But these were strange days. Only a fortnight before, the crescent moon had risen purple, a dire portent
indeed, and a weird horn had sounded on the wind, heard not just in Ehawk’s village but everywhere. The
old oracle-women muttered prophecies of doom, and tales of awful beasts roaming and slaying in the
King’s Forest grew more

common each day.

And then these men had come from the west, a knight of the

Prologue