"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 26 - City of the Living Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

understand exactly how the miracle took place.
 Unfortunately, he was too far off to make out any words. He started crawling closer, but before he'd
covered half the distance, the soldiers were marching off again. All he could make out was, "Hud, na, na,
ni! Hud, na, na, ni!"-which was probably nothing more than a marching cadence and certainly didn't tell
him very much. He settled down to another day on the trail of the soldiers.

After about three hours, the ground began to slope sharply upward. The mist began to thin out, until
Blade could look ahead and see two sharp peaks with a pass between them. The soldiers were climbing
a slope that rose up to the pass. Some of the cavalry were already riding back and forth across the pass.
Blade found cover and waited, listening to the distant cracking of whips and the lowing of the oxen as
they were prodded up the slope. When the last rider had vanished around the flank of the peak to the
left, Blade left cover and plunged forward. He saw that the pass was unguarded and went up the slope
like a long-distance runner.

Ahead of him a gently rolling, sparsely wooded plain stretched away toward a distant line of hills. High
overhead he saw a flock of birds, black specks wheeling against a clear sky. Far away across the plain,
he could see the flickering banner and the glint of sunlight on armor and weapons. On the softer ground
here, the trail was clearly visible-a wide strip of footprints, hoofmarks, and wheel ruts. The ground was
still rock-strewn, but now it was almost covered with coarse grass. With no mist to conceal him, Blade
had to drop back until he could barely see the soldiers. At that distance he was quite sure they could
hardly make out a lone figure stalking along behind them, even if they were keeping a good watch.

Over the next two hours the ground slowly became more and more overgrown with large bushes and
small trees. Blade found he was able to slowly close up on the solders with no risk of being seen. He was
within three hundred yards of the rear of the party when a village appeared ahead.

The village seemed large and prosperous. Around it stretched pastures, grain fields, orchards, kitchen
gardens, and even a vineyard. The village itself was completely surrounded by a stone wall crowned with
thorny branches. The buildings inside were either sod or stone, and all had heavily thatched roofs. The
smoke from many hearths and fires rose from brick chimneys.

As the soldiers marched past, the farmers working in the fields or pruning the trees threw them brief
glances. Then they went back to work, as if the soldiers were no more interesting than a light shower of
rain and somewhat less important than an escaped pig.

The closer the soldiers got to the village, the more alert they seemed. The mounted men were trying to
look in all directions at once, and the infantry marched with their heads up and their hands on their
swords. Blade saw men climbing down from the wagons and walking close behind the five cannon.

The soldiers marched out on to a broad area of flat, beaten earth directly in front of the gate of the
village. The drums beat a long roll, and the trumpets blasted out an even longer, ear-torturing peal that
seemed to go on forever. Blade listened from behind a wall in the orchard, less than a hundred yards
away. He half expected the village wall to collapse from the sheer volume of noise, like the walls of
Jericho and Joshua's trumpets.

The noise-it could hardly be called music-died away. By now the infantry was drawn up in two lines, the
musketeers in front and the archers in back. The wagons stood behind the infantry, and the cannon rested
on either flank. Gunners stood behind each of the cannon, lighted matches in their hands. The cavalry was
riding around the village at a slow trot, their shields on their arms and their lances held ready for action.