"Matthew Woodring Stover - Caine 01 - Heroes Die" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stover Matthew Woodring)

I'm coming down—it's just a little jump—but I've got my eyes on Smartguard, who's disentangling
himself from Dumbguard, and my foot lands on Toa-Phelathon's head.

It rolls out from under me, and I upend like Elmer Fudd.

I barely manage to take the fall on my shoulder instead of the back of my neck, and only the
narrowness of the service corridor saves my life: when Smartguard swings his broadsword at my head,
its tip hangs up in the woodwork. I try to roll away, but I come up against Jemson Thai, who's still
choking, and this time Smart-guard gets it right. Instead of swinging his sword, he lunges with a stiff arm
and drives a foot of steel through my liver.

A sword in the belly is a disconcerting thing: it doesn't really hurt, much, but it's really fuckingcold,
it radiates freezing cold that surges through your whole body and drains the strength out of your legs, like
the brain freeze you get from chewing up an ice cube only you feel it all over, and you can feel the blade
sliding around in there, slicing things up, and frankly, the whole process sucks, if you ask me.

A couple of pounds of steel in the belly also plays fuckass with the forcepattern of the spell that
makes me look like a teenage eunuch. The magick flickers like a dying CRT, and the discharge lifts hair
on my neck and makes my beard tingle.

Smarlguard pulls the blade instead of twisting it around in there—a mistake of inexperience that
I'm going to kill him for. It scrapes a rib on the way out, a sensation that's analogous to fingernails across
a blackboard combined with having your teeth drilled without anesthetic; screaming clouds of blackness
bloom inside my eyes. I moan and shudder with pain, and Smartguard mistakes these for death rattle and
convulsion—more inexperience.

"There, you bastard, an easy death is better than you deserve!" he says.

Tears well in his eyes for his fallen lord, and I don't have the heart to tell him that I agree with him.
He bends toward me a little as the enchanted disguise finally fades, and his eyes go wide. There's awe in
his voice when he says, "Hey, you could be...you look like, likeCaine! Youare, aren' t you? I mean, who
else would...Great K'hool, I've killed Caine! I'm gonnabe famous!"

I don't think so.

I hook my right toe around his ankle to hold his leg while I stamp his knee with my left. It snaps,
loudly, and he collapses into a wailing heap. That's the trouble with chainmail: it's no defense against joints
bending in ways they're not designed to bend. He doesn't drop his sword, though; the kid has heart.

I come to my feet with an acrobat's kip, tearing something inside my wounded belly. He jabs at me
with the sword—but from the ground he's slow, and it's easy to slap my palms together around the flat of
the blade, kick his wrist, and take it away from him. I flip the sword end-for-end and neatly catch the hilt.

"Too bad, kid," I tell him. "You'd've been pretty good, if you'd lived."

I shortarm the swing, and it takes him across the top of the ear, half an inch below the studded rim
of his skullcap. The edge doesn't penetrate the chain coif, but it doesn't have to; I'm good with swords,
and the impact alone is enough to fracture his skull and kill him.