"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 1 - Lure Of The Basilisk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

first stared and then ran as he appeared in their midst.
Although Garth's noseless, leathery-brown face and glaring red eyes were
enough to evoke horror among humans, it was quite possible that some of the
villagers did not even notice him at first but ran from his mount, thinking it
some unnatural monster of the Waste. It stood five feet high at the shoulder
and measured eighteen feet from nose to tail, its sleekfurred feline form so
superbly muscled that the weight of its armored rider was as nothing to it.
Its wide, padded paws made no more sound than any lesser cat's and its slender
tail curled behind it like a panther's. Like its master, the warbeast did not
spare so much as a glance from its golden slit-eyes or a twitch of its stubby
whiskers for the terror-stricken townspeople, but strode smoothly on,
unaffected, with the superb grace of its catlike kind, triangular ears
flattened against its head. Its normal walk was as fast as a man's trot, and
the relentless onward flow of that great black body moving in utter silence
through the icy mud of the streets was as terrifying in itself as the
three-inch fangs that gleamed from its jaw.
As the screams and shouts of the fleeting villagers increased, a faint
frown touched Garth's thin-lipped mouth, though his gaze never wavered; this
noisy reception was not what he wanted. He slid back his cloak, revealing the
steely gray breastplate and black mail beneath, and slid his double-edged
battle-axe from its place on the saddle, carrying it loosely in his left hand.
His right hand still held the guide-handle of the beast's halter, a guide that
was more a formality than a necessity for a well-trained warbeast. Garth knew
that his mount was the finest product of Kirpa's breeding farms, the end
result of a thousand years of magically assisted crossbreeding and careful
selection. Still, he kept the handle in hand, preferring to trust no creature
save himself.
As Garth approached the market-square at the center of town, he found
himself the object of a hundred curious stares. His lack of offensive action
thus far had allowed the villagers to gather their nerve, and they now lined
the street to watch him pass, their earlier shouting giving way to an awed
silence; he was by far the most impressive sight Skelleth had seen in
centuries. They gawked at the size of his mount, at his own seven-foot
stature, at the gleaming axe in his hand, at the dull armor that protected him
and, incidentally, hid the black fur that was one of the major differences
between his race and humanity. He could not hide his lack of facial hair, his
lack of a nose, nor the hollow cheeks and narrow lips which all combined to
give his visage, to human eyes, much the appearance of a red-eyed skull.
Garth was not impressed with Skelleth. It certainly failed to live up to
the ancestral tales of a mighty fortress standing eternally vigilant, barring
his race from the warm, lush south. Although the outer wall had plainly once
been a serious fortification, he had seen several gaps in it as he approached,
crumbled sections wide enough for a dozen soldiers to walk through abreast if
they were willing to clamber over loose stone. He could see why the wall went
unrepaired; the village guarded by this quondam barrier was scarcely worth the
trouble of taking that walk. Quite aside from the foolishness of the crowd,
even in the parts not utterly ruinous, the half-timbered buildings that sagged
with long years of harsh weather and ill care were no better than the poorest
sections of his native Ordunin-rather worse, in truth, and the people, dirty,
ragged, and flea-bitten, were worse still. But then, they were merely humans.