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

tiger-striped by the declining sun. Heedless of tearing thorns, she wriggled
closer to the charred timbers of the mammoth siege machine. Smeared with soot
and leaf mould, her tanned limbs and shift of coarse brown cloth merged with
the rotting timbers of the apparatus. Against her thin face her brown eyes
seemed large as those of some nocturnal creature. She froze--motionless save
the fast rise and fall of her high breasts and the quick, hunted flicker of
her eyes.
At first there had been hounds. They had almost caught her then. But she had
slithered breathlessly through a debris-choked tunnel, and when the baying
pack had followed, the rotted shoring had given way. Now men's eyes had to
search out her trail, and it was enough to hold a scant lead.
A moss-grown skull stared up at her, the rest of its bones still crushed
beneath the throwing arm of the trebuchet. Two skeletons in rotting mail lay
half-buried in the earthworks, ensnared in a nest of saw-briar. Near her feet
lay a rust-pitted dagger; a mouldering swordhilt protruded from beneath the
wreckage of the throwing arm. The rusted weapons gave her comfort no more than
the rotted bones caused her fear. Her terror was of the present, and of the
savage men who hunted her.
"Here! Fresh blood!"
From behind her--and close. She had been unable to bide her trail. Her
concealment was no refuge.
Hopelessly she broke from cover, flinging herself past the shroud of thorns.
Their excited shouts were close--in a few seconds they would reach the ruined
siege engine. Rank brush and twisted second-growth trees promised scarce cover
to bide her flight.
"Yo! That's her!"
Terror urged another burst of strength to her aching legs. She dashed headlong
through this graveyard of a battle three decades silent. Each breath was
agony, and still her lungs could not draw breath enough.
They were following close to her heels, confused in the war-scarred forest,
making too much noise themselves to catch the sound of her flight. But they
had horses.
She hurtled the fallen beams of a smashed springald, stumbling over the piled
rusted fragments of its iron-headed bolts. It brought her up just short of a
weed-grown trench that lay hidden a stop beyond. But this was a region of the
battleground she did not recognize, and she dared not chance shelter that
might instead be a cul-de-sac.
A tangle of yellowed bones filled its bottom, she saw as she leaped scrambling
across. Then into a brush-grown ravine a dozen painful strides beyond. Wriggle
snake-like down its slope, where bones line the eroded dirt like cobblestones.
They are stopping by the trench, making certain their quarry doesn't hide
there...
The gully emptied into a wash of detritus and sparse scrub. Beyond lay a thick
stand of broken trees--cover, if she could reach it. She darted onto the wash,
keeping low.
"Yee-hee!"
She skidded on the loose rubble of the clearing. Half a dozen horsemen broke
through the patch of woods ahead. They had encircled her.
"Here! We got her!" They pounded toward her.
She spun, but there was no escape behind. The others were pelting down from