"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 01 - The Bronze Axe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

The girl put her hands on her hips and stared at him in exasperation. Her eyes flickered up the tall
trunk of him, over the slim hips, tidy waist, massive chest and wide shoulders and the thick column of his
neck. Her gaze softened, as did her tone.
"One thing I know—you are no serf! Possibly you are a nobleman, an aristocrat, from some far-off
land. Your name?" Imperious again.
"Blade. Richard Blade. And indeed from a far-off land."
"Blade? Richard Blade?" She pronounced it Rich-hard Bleed. She grimaced. "A strange name, by
Frigga! My tongue will not accommodate to it. But we will speak of all this later—now I command you
to escort me to the town of my cousin, King Lycanto. The town is called Sarum Vil and it should be
somewhere near. My cousin will protect us and give us shelter for the night."
Blade smiled. "Somewhere near, you say? But you do not know exactly?"
She frowned at him. "I—well, not exactly. But I am sure we can find it. There is a path that—"
He chuckled. "If we can find the path. In other words, princess, you are lost. We are both lost."
Before she could answer a great dog broke from the cover of the woods and came bounding at
them. It was running far in advance of the pack, eyes glinting red and long muzzle slavering, and it was a
killer bent on doing the work for which it had been trained. With bristling hackles and thunder in its throat
the huge beast came straight in for the kill.
As Blade stepped in front of the girl he plucked the drinking horn from her girdle. "Behind me," he
snapped. "Remain perfectly still."
The animal—to Blade it looked like some weird cross between a mastiff and a wolfhound—left the
ground some ten feet from Blade. The long fangs glinted cruelly in the twilight. Blade went into a half
crouch, the sword drawn back to thrust, the drinking horn in his left hand and in front of him.
The dog—at close quarters it looked as big as a small pony—crashed into Blade with furious impact,
the long teeth snapping for his throat. Blade, taking one backward step, rammed the drinking horn down
the red maw and twisted it. Then, in a series of fluid movements, he withdrew a bleeding hand and thrust
hard into the creature's belly. He put all his mighty shoulder behind the thrust and felt the hilt of the sword
grate against ribs. The dog fell away with a dying squall and went into its death convulsions. Blade thrust
quickly into its throat in a mercy stroke.
 He put the sword deep into earth to cleanse it and turned to the girl. She was watching, her eyes
wide, one hand to her mouth, and for a moment her face bespoke fierce approval.
Yet she said, "A fine animal. A pity to slay it."
He held up a hand for silence. With the going of the sun the darkness had fallen suddenly, an abrupt
curtain, and the voices and the baying of the hounds were closer. Blade, studying the thick woods to the
west, saw the sudden red sputter of a torch. Then another, and still another. The scarlet flambeaus,
danger beacons in the dust, denoted the two horns of a crescent that was closing in on them. Very close
now. Too close. They could not go west, and already the horns of the crescent were closing off north
and south. That left east, the direction in which the brook ran.
Blade took the girl's hand in his big paw. "Come on, princess. We are going to run a little."
The water was icy. The brook was not deep, never more than a foot or two, but the bottom was
rough and stony with countless boulders around which the stream cascaded. Caught brush, snagged
timbers and fallen trees impeded their way. It grew cold and a dank white mist began to rise and hang
over the water. Blade, naked as he was, began to feel the cold. He was inured to hardship, discounted it,
yet he was shivering.
So was the girl. Her hand, clinging to his big one, grew colder by the minute. Blade was setting a
merciless pace and soon she was gasping. Several times, but for his support, she would have fallen.
Finally, tripping over a hidden snag, she came sprawling into his arms and remained there for a moment.
She clung to him, panting, and he was very aware of the lithe body beneath the thin linen. There was a
fragrance about her, other than that of clean woman flesh, which he found vaguely familiar. After a
moment he identified it.Chypre. It smacked of sunnier climes, of theLevant , and he wondered how she
had come by it. The last time Blade had smelledchyprehad been inAlexandria . A man had been wearing