"R. A. MacAvoy - L2 - King of the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

your subject. Observe me well.
Watching through a window I saw five assassins as-sault my lady, who was carrying in her a
four-months’ child. They were armed with axes and daggers, with which they first attacked her horse:
well-trained men. The white mare went down in a heap and I saw Arlin for a moment perched on the
sinking back, and then she, in her black shirt, was hidden.
I went through the dosed window, which was stupid of me, for the door was open to the summer air only
ten feet away. I remember only the brilliance of scattered glass and the brilliance of my horror as I ran
down the oratory walkway in my breeches and stockings, smashing against the orna-mental maples that
marked each curve of the path.
I was three hundred feet away; too far to be of any help. I came skidding, along the gravel to a heap of
bodies and gushing blood—red blood on white hide and blood staining dark woolens darker. Amid the
pile of hands and teeth and staring eyes I sought for Arlin’s, but in my shock I could not make out what
belonged to what, not even horse from hu—
man, and then Arlin swung out from behind a tree, holding to the bole with both hands. Not standing
straight. “Go,” she said, and pointed to where the walk widened and met the wagon drive.
In leaving her alone and chasing the fleeing assassins I think I acted like someone else entirely, not
Nazhuret of Sordaling. Not Zhurrie of the Forest Oratory, certainly. But Powl—who am I to say I know
myself, and that self dipped in horror especially?
The river pebbles of the drive, so laboriously gathered and laid generations ago, slid and shifted and
slowed me, but I did not feel their imprint against my stockinged feet, nor feel the heat of the effort.
Only a little way beyond, at the well with the stone benches, where even now local people did leave gifts
of food and flowers, I found two men, leaning, gasping, one clench-ing one arm in the other and one
holding his stomach_ Hold-ing his stomach as Arlin had. By this and by their dun hunters’ jackets and
breeches I knew them to be two of the assailants, and my mind reproduced the picture of slaughter and I
could see now that there were three dead men around the dead horse, one of them pinned and obscured
by the mare’s bulk.
These two had no more than a few seconds’ warning of my approach, but the man with the stomach
injury already had a knife in his hand. The broken arm turned and ran.
The knife-fighter was experienced, and I hate encoun-tering knife-fighters more than I do any armored
knight, for their art is a deadly stroking, dose in the belly and hard to predict. Arlin is a knife-fighter,
however, and so I have had much practice. I let him think he was disemboweling me neatly, but tucked
away and caught his hand at the end of its figure and disemboweled him instead. I did it of a purpose, for
convenience’s sake, because I wanted him out of the way. I wanted time to think about things.
Never before in my life had I killed a man for such a small reason. At times I wonder if that deed did ’not
stain the events of the year to come.
(Perhaps that conceit is human arrogance—to think that events revolve around the condition of my own
soul. Or perhaps it is a subtle awareness, and in reality my soul reflects the condition of events.
Whatever, humans like myself will always think that way.)
Before the assassin could look down and see his own guts spilling, I broke his spine at the neck. That
was not done for convenience, but rather because I thought he would want it so.
The last assassin did not try to resist, but stumbled away from me, face white, eyes black, his arm bone
protruding from both skin and jacket. I caught him by the collar, and he watched as I dropped my
breeches on the road. The poor brute of a man must have thought I was going to rape him—or even
defecate on him—but I used the garment to wrap his ruined arm against his body and I led him back to
the carnage.
Arlin was sitting beside her mare, regardless of the pool-ing blood, crouched over her own middle, and
her face was not much better than my prisoner’s. When she saw me she straightened and wiped the pain
away.
“There were two,” she said tentatively. I gestured be-hind me and made some sort of sound and Arlin
understood. She rose as I came to her and, holding the man at arm’s length, I let her lean against me.