"Karl Edward Wagner - Mirage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

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Mirage
Karl Edward Wagner


Death came shimmering through the afternoon heat.
In silence broken only by cursing, the battleworn band of
mercenaries had fled along the dusty mountain road. Overhead
the sun burned dismally, scornfully; its heat lanced through the
ragged forest cover and seared the disheveled fugitives.
Stumbling over scorched stones, they had plodded along in the
weary desperation of flight, dust choking their panting breath and
smothering them in a grimy blanket compounded of sweat and
caked blood.
Half a hundred soldiers of a fallen cause. Men who had
gambled their lives for the ambitious bastard brother of
Chrosanthe's dainty king. But Jasseartion had proven no fool
despite his laces and curious affectations; his spies, his personal
army had been as meticulously efficient as his subjects foolishly
loyal. In the end, his brother Talyvion had hung moaning in a tiny
cage suspended from the great beams of the same throne room
toward which his ambitions had lured him. Now the scattered
remnants of his smashed army fled across the land, pursued by
Jasseartion's tireless soldiers and vengeful subjects, a bounty on
each man's head.
For Kane the bounty was great. Kane was the last of Talyvion's
lieutenants still unaccounted for by Jasseartion's so very efficient
servants. And although Kane had only entered into the
conspiracy shortly before its downfall, his remarkable talent both
for cloaked intrigue and open battle had impressed a particular
enmity upon Chrosanthe's ruler, and upon his subjects as well.
Even to a rebel would come full pardon and more gold than he
might earn in ten years' soldiery, so promised the royal
proclamation. True, Jasseartion's word had never been so
inviolable as to inspire confidence among the fugitives from his
well-famed justice, but it was nonetheless a most tempting
proposal.
With this in mind, Kane had wrapped his face in bloody
bandages, padded his belly to outsize proportions, and covered
his mail with a filthy, voluminous cloak. So disguised, he had
mingled with a band of fleeing refugees, hoping that neither
Jasseartion's followers nor his own companions would recognize
this dirty, obese foot soldier with bandaged face as the
aristocratic stranger who had joined with Talyvion not long
before the latter's fortunes had changed.
Then the searing summer air was filled with the sharp hiss of