"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 3 - Sword Of Bheleu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

told himself that the anger he felt was not his own. There was no reason to be
angry with the girl, who had acted as she thought best. There was no reason to
be angry with Kyrith and her volunteers-at least, not reason enough for him to
take action. They didn't know any better.
It took several minutes of effort to force himself back to a state of
comparative calm. When he had managed it, he told himself that he would really
have to get rid of the sword as soon as he possibly could.
Well, that was part of the personal business he wanted to attend to here
in Skelleth; he intended either to deliver the loot he had brought from
Dûsarra to the Forgotten King or dispose of it someplace where it wouldn't
endanger anyone in the future.
With that in mind, he urged Koros forward toward the town's southwestern
gate.
There was no guard; had the townspeople realized they were besieged,
there almost certainly would have been, he told himself. Therefore, they
apparently hadn't noticed. That was good; it meant that no act of war had yet
taken place as far as the humans were concerned.
It struck him as curious that the only gate the Baron saw fit to guard
was the one leading north. True, the other four all faced nominally friendly
territory, and there was no real threat in any direction-except perhaps from
his own people. Duty at the North Gate was a convenient punishment for
guardsmen who had displeased the Baron; Saram had told him that, months ago.
The other gates were less suitable, since they were more sheltered from the
cold winds and more likely to have traffic disrupting the boredom.
Whatever the reasoning behind it, he was glad that the Baron did guard
only the north. It meant he could enter the town unseen.
The gate before him was actually merely a gap in the wall where the road
wound its way through the rubble of long-fallen towers; there was no trace
left of the actual gate that had once been there. Koros had no trouble in
making his way through it. The road through the West Gate was partially
blocked by debris, but this one was not; it was kept clear for the caravans
that provided Skelleth's only real contact with civilization.
Inside the wall, Garth found himself surrounded by ruins. The town had
once been a fair-sized city, in the days when it was humanity's main bulwark
against the overmen in the final years of the Racial Wars three centuries
earlier; but when the fighting stopped, so did the flow of supplies and men
from the south. Skelleth had withered, shrinking inward, until now it was
mostly abandoned. The remaining village was clustered about the market square
and the Baron's mansion, surrounded by acres of crumbling, empty buildings.
His goal was the King's Inn, the tavern where the Forgotten King lived.
It stood on a narrow, filthy alley behind the Baron's mansion, right near the
center of town, so there was no way he could hope to reach it undetected. That
being the case, he saw little point in trying; skulking about through the
ruins would just slow him down, and he wanted to get to Kyrith's encampment
before she had time to do anything else stupid.
Therefore, he rode straight onward, ignoring the astonished pedestrians
and householders who stared as he passed.
It was quite likely that word would reach the Baron, which was
unfortunate; Garth was still, after all, under sentence of exile, forbidden to
enter Skelleth without the Baron's express permission. He might, have to kill