"Brian Lumley - Dreamlands 1 - Hero Of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

some crevice in which

HERO OF DREAMS

to wedge himself, the better to make a stand against the horrors.

Without a thought to his own safety, the newcomer grit-led his teeth and went slithering and
leaping in the gloom down the shale-covered slope. He waved his sword above his head as he ran at
the hissing, scampering creatures, whistling and shouting like a madman. Still on the run, he
snatched up a large lump of lava in his free hand and hurled it at the insect-like hounds, and had
the satisfaction of seeing one of them leap high in the air with the shock of the impact as die
missile struck home.

Then he was upon them, slicing with his sword and panting through clenched teeth and grimacing
lips. By good fortune his singing blade took the jointed hind legs right off one of them—the one


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that held aloft the beleaguered stranger's sword—and in another moment the man had leaped forward
to snatch back his weapon from the crippled spider-hound. Striking together, the two men put paid
to that demented creature where it dragged its stinger uselessly behind it.

But now the other spider-hounds had realized that the balance of the game had evened up, and that
therefore a quick end must be made of it. As at a single word of command they launched themselves
at Hero, twisting their bodies in the air so that their stingers struck at his face. He ducked,
impaled one of them on his sword, felt the weight of the other on his back and a lancing agony as
a single drop of mordant poison burned through his clothing to the skin . .. then felt the horror
kicked from him and heard its final hiss as the rescued man took both hands to his sword and
hacked its cockroach head clean from its body.

Quickly, without a backward glance, Hero tugged his own weapon free of the scale-armored hound
where it twitched and jerked among shale and lava fragments, then split its chitinous skull with a
single stroke. The fight was

BRIAN LUMLEY

finished, and only the moaning of the wind over the peaks remained: that and the panting of the
men, and the nameless drip of the thin gray ichor which was the life-blood of diese denizens of
nightmare.

Now Hero turned to the other man, peering at him where he stood cleaning his weapon on his black
jacket. The other looked back in turn, and gratitude shone in his eyes; but his breathing was
ragged and he coughed painfully.

'They took you by surprise," Hero ventured.

"Eh?" the other finally grunted. "Yes, they did. Damned horrors! Didn't see 'em till they were on
me. They don't hiss at all when they're tracking you—only when they have you cornered!"