"Ken MacLeod - The Highway Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

minute. I jumped the ditch and the wall into the meadow and searched
along the foot of the wall at the far side. I knew what I was looking for, but it
was pure luck that I spotted it: a gleam of steel. I bent over and picked up a
six-inch bolt with a blunt point at one end. The other end was tapered with
four narrow raised bits like low fins along it. It looked like a toy rocket.

A crossbow bolt.

“The house is a hide,” I said to Euan and Murdo, back at the lorry.
“For maybe a dozen people. They took the windows out, dragged up chairs
and couches or whatever and made themselves comfortable, and just sat
there waiting for a herd of deer or maybe a flock of sheep to go and eat the
grass. The beasts wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t even smell them. They just
had to wait and then let fly with cross-bolts. You could bring down ten at one
go that way. Maybe more.”

“Very nice,” said Murdo. I couldn’t tell whether he meant my detective
work or the neat slaughter I had detected.
 “Why not just smash out the windows?” said Euan.

“To keep it quiet,” said Murdo.

“From who? The deer?” said Euan.

“Maybe,” I said. I wasn’t so sure about that.

“Not much sport in the shooting,” said Euan.

“This was not for sport,” I said.

“Aye,” said Murdo. “And speaking of food, my breakfast’s in
Lochcarron, and that’s two hours away if we’re lucky.”

“Breakfast? What do you call the bacon roll you had in Dingwall?”

“A snack.”

“A midnight feast,” said Euan. “It was that dark I was expecting to feel
my wife.”

“That was just me,” I said. “You had me worried.”

****

II
SMOKING GUN

Euan smoked a roll-up before we got back into the cab. Nobody
complained. We’d all got kind of easier on him and his bad habit since the
big story came out. Maybe it’s all been forgotten now, when you’re listening