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

the left. Beyon Phais rode Tip, with Beau to Loric's left.
And now Tip could hear an intermittent hissing and babbling, spates
of unrecognizable words interspersed by gig gling and weeping . . . and
silence. Onward he rode, now able to see the frozen surface of the
waterway ahead, bone white under the grey overcast above. At last he
came to a
long stone wharf bordering the Ironwater River itself, with
a great number of boat slips and barge landings along its
considerable length, all empty in the winter cold. His bow at the ready,
Tip waited for the others to reach the long, long pier, and as he held
position, again he heard distant hissed words, as if someone were
revealing secrets to a confidant, though what was said Tip did not know,
for it was in a tongue he spoke not.
To the left, bucco, and near. But wait for the others. Now Beau
appeared on the stone pier a distance away, and in quick succession
Bekki and Phais and Loric rode onto the windswept stone.
Phais turned rightward and held out a shushing hand to Tipperton.
Quietly she dismounted.
Tip did likewise, carefully and silently swinging a leg over and down.
Moving toward the Dara, Tip listened and looked and tried to hear
and see everything all at once. And as he passed a wide ramp pull-way
leading up from the river to the pier and across to the collapsed ruins of
a dockside warehouse, from within the wreckage a giggling babble and
weep sissed forth.
 Tip turned toward the warehouse ruin and signalled to Phais it was
here. And he waited for her to arrive.
Together they crept in among the shatter and char, and found
whence the hissings came: from 'neath an overturned barge. And as
Bekki and Loric and Beau came in among the rubble, Phais and Tip
knelt and peered under. And in the shadows they saw— "Lord Tain!"
gasped Tipperton.
The white-haired man was holding the frozen corpse of a burnt
woman and muttering into her ear.



As weeping and babbling and hissed secrets came sissing from under
the barge, Bekki stood up and growled. "I say we kill him now."
"What?" blurted Tip.
"He fled from the field of battle and deserves nothing more than a
coward's death."
Loric put a hand on Bekki's shoulder. "Aye, my friend, he did flee
from the Rupt at Mineholt North, yet he was advisor to Prince Loden,
hence justice is King Enrik's tc do and not ours."
"King Loden, you mean," said Bekki.
Tip frowned up at Bekki. "Prince Loden?"
Bekki shook his head. "Nay, Tipperton, Loden is now king. Enrik is
dead."
"How do you know this?"
Bekki gestured at the upturned barge. "Craven Tail says so."