"Dennis L. McKiernan - Hell's Crucible 2 - Into the Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKiernan Dennis L)

"What'll we do?" asked Beau. "Pass it by?"
Loric shook his head. "Nay. We must see what has befallen; others
will want to know." Loric kicked his heels to the flanks of his mount,
drawing his sword as he moved downslope.
And so did they all follow: Bekki with his hammer in hand, Phais with
her blade, Beau with his bullet-laden sling, and Tip with an arrow strung.



They rode across the remains of crashed-down gates and into the
rubble beyond, and hard-frozen bodies lay everywhere, yet some were
burned as well. Too, not only were buildings smashed, but charred
timbers and ash attested to raging fire.
And Phais and Loric looked at one another and nodded in unspoken
agreement.
"What?" asked Beau.
"Drake," replied Phais.
The swirling air muttered among the wrack like whisper-ing wraiths
on the wind, as through the devastation and toward the palace they
rode, now following Bekki, thread ing their way among snow and ice
and burned wreckag and the dead. But when they reached the site of
the man sion they found nought but blackened corpses amid shal tered,
charred ruins.
Beau looked about, shaking his head in disbelief, his eye wide and
filled with distress.
"I wonder—" began Tip—
—but Phais threw up a hand. "Hist!"
While the chill wind spun through splinter and burn am stone, Phais
cocked her head this way and that, and thei she looked at Loric and
gestured toward the river.
He nodded, and softly said, "I agree."
Bekki frowned. "I do not hear—"
 "But they do," said Beau, canting his head toward the Elves.
"What is it?" breathed Tip.
"Laughter. Weeping," murmured Loric.
"Mounted or afoot?" asked Phais, gripping her sword.
"Mounted, I think," replied Loric, easing his hora ahead.
Now Beau frowned in puzzlement. "The weeping, the laughing, is
mounted?"
"No," whispered Tip. "It's we who will go mounted rather than on
foot down to the river's edge."
"Oh," breathed Beau in understanding.
"Spread wide," said Phais, "a street or so. 'Twould no do for us all to
ride into the same ambush."
Beau looked at Tip and silently mouthed [Ambush?]
Tip shrugged and chrked his pony rightward to stai away.
Taking a deep breath, Beau went leftward.
Widely spread, down through the snow- and ice-laden wrack they
rode in a ragged line abreast, down toward thi frozen Ironwater, Bekki
in the center, with Phais a cobblei street to the right and Loric a street to