"Karl Edward Wagner - Lynortis Reprise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

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Lynortis Reprise
Karl Edward Wagner




Prologue


High above the blighted wasteland Lynortis broods in gloomy majesty. Lofty
eyrie on a fang of sandstone, the fallen citadel stares out over the silent
wilderness of desolation far below. Lynortis. Fortress city whose walls no
army could overwhelm. Tyrant lord of the limitless forestlands sprawled at its
feet.
Lynortis, your eyes are sightless now, and the rich rolling valley over which
you reigned is the boneyard of two hundred thousand souls. Lynortis is dead,
and there are no mourners. No longer do carrion hawks nest in your gutted
halls; even the jackals have abandoned your dunes of bleached bones. Alone and
silent, you are the funeral obelisk for your unburied tens of thousands--and
for the bones of your conqueror. When slayer kills slayer, all are one with
the slain.
Two nations died here although one was hailed victor. Ask the dead whose side
won the war.




I
Hunters in the Forest


The girl's breath came in ragged sobs, and her stride was a broken stumble.
Hours before, her long legs had run swift, sure as a deer beneath the
misshapen trees. A deer is swift, but hounds are patient. Since noon they had
hunted her through that insane nightmare of moss-grown destruction. Now her
tanned legs were scratched and bruised as they pumped wearily beneath the
thorn-laced branches, and her bare feet left smears of blood upon the gnarled
roots. Her long brown hair was disordered with twigs and moss; her
thigh-length shapeless gown hung in grimy tatters about her lithe figure. The
only sound she uttered was the jagged rhythm of her breath.
"Not here!" The hoarse drawl came dimly front a hundred yards to her right.
"Not here!" An answering bail from her left, and closer. There echoed a stamp
of hooves and jingle of harness.
She darted into the wreckage of a huge trebuchet. A tent of saw-briar overgrow
the rotting beam of its counterweight, and the shadowy shelter within was