"Roger Taylor - Hawklan 1 - Call of the sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Taylor Roger)

Occasionally, finding some rocky outcrop, he would stop and rest for a while in its lee, straightening up,
grateful for a brief respite. Then, wrapping his cloak about himself for greater warmth, he would move off
again.

All around him the wind screamed and clattered and echoed through valleys and clefts, bouncing off
ringing rock faces and hissing over the snow, to sound sometimes like the clamour of a terrible battle,
sometimes like the mocking laughter of a thousand tormentors, sometimes like a great sigh. From time to
time the man paused and turned and listened.

That he was lost, he knew. But that was all he knew. That and the knowledge that, for all his cloak and
hood were thick and warm, he would surely soon die in this fearful place if he did not come across
shelter and warmth soon.

Then through the tumult around him came another sound. The man paused as though his own soft
footsteps might obscure it. But it came again and again. Distant and shifting, but persistent. It was a cry.
A cry for help.

The hooded head cast about for the direction from which it came, but the wind mocked him and brought
it to him from every angle, now near, now far. Then for an instant the wind was gone. Dropped to a low
sighing moan. And the plaintive cry rode on it like a distraught messenger, revealing its true self before the
wind returned to rend and scatter it. The man turned and moved forward, ignoring the many wind-born
counterfeits now tempting him elsewhere again.

He soon came upon the caller, a small figure dark in the snow, held fast by the leg in a cruel,
long-forgotten trap. Despite his desperate need and long pleading however, the caller cried out in terror
as the hooded figure loomed out of the gloom towards him. But the man bent down and laid a calming
hand on him.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said.

The metal of the trap was bitterly cold and the man had to wrap his hands in his cloak to prise apart its
heavy sprung jaws. As he strained, the wind blew his hood back and the trapped figure looked up at him
and gave him a name. Then the jaws were open and their captive rolled away with a cry of relief.

The man examined the injured leg closely and grimaced.

‘It stopped hurting some time ago,’ said the victim faintly.

The man nodded. ‘That’s the cold,’ he said. ‘It’s stopped the bleeding too and probably saved your life.’

‘For a little while,’ the figure said weakly.

The man nodded. ‘Neither of us have long, without better fortune,’ he said quietly. Then he looked again
at the leg. ‘But whatever happens, I’m afraid this is lost. It’s almost completely severed.’ And with an
unexpected and powerful twist he tore away the remains of the damaged limb and dropped it into the
snow. Its owner fainted.

Bending forward the man picked up the unconscious form and, angrily kicking the trap shut, moved off
again into the storm.