The Desert Spear. Peter Brett V.
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу The Desert Spear - Peter Brett V. страница 3
Название: The Desert Spear
Автор: Peter Brett V.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Героическая фантастика
isbn: 9780007301904
isbn:
More and more of the veiled men flowed out of the camp, falling quickly into ranks and killing with smooth, brutal efficiency. The wards on their weapons and shields flared repeatedly in the darkness.
Up on the rise, the mind demons watched the battle impassively, showing no concern for the drones falling to the enemy spears. There was a throb in the cranium of one as it sent a command to its mimic on the field.
Immediately, the mimic hurled the corpse into one of the wardposts around the camp, smashing it and creating a breach. Up on the rise, there was another throb, and the other corelings broke off from engaging the warriors and poured through the gap into the enemy camp.
Left off balance, the warriors turned back to see tents blazing as flame drones scurried about, and hear the screams of their women and children as the larger corelings broke through charred and scorched inner wards.
The warriors cried out and rushed to their loved ones, all semblance of order lost. In moments the tight, invincible units had fragmented into thousands of separate creatures, little more than prey.
It seemed as if the camp would be overrun and burned to the ground, but then a figure appeared from the central pavilion. He was clad in black, like the warriors, but his outer robe, headwrap, and veil were the purest white. At his brow was a circlet of gold, and in his hands was a great spear of shining metal. The coreling princes hissed at the sight.
There were cries at the man’s approach. The mind demons sneered at the primitive grunts and yelps that passed for communication among men, but the meaning was clear. The others were drones. This one was their mind.
Under the domination of the newcomer, the warriors remembered their castes and returned to their previous cohesion. A unit broke off to seal the outer breach. Another two fought fire. One more ushered the defenseless to safety.
Thus freed, the remainder scoured the camp, and the drones could not long stand against them. In minutes the camp was as littered with coreling bodies as the field outside. The mimic, still disguised as a rock demon, was soon the only coreling left, too quick to be taken by spear but unable to break through the wall of shields without revealing its true self.
There was a throb from the rise, and the mimic vanished into a shadow, dematerializing and seeping out of the camp through a tiny gap in the wards. The enemy was still searching for it when the mimic returned to its place by its master’s side.
The two slender corelings stood atop the rise for several minutes, silent vibrations passing between them. Then, as one, the coreling princes turned their eyes to the north, where the other human mind was said to be.
One of the mind demons turned to its mimic, kneeling back in the form of a gigantic wind demon, and walked up its extended wing. As it vanished into the night, the remaining mind demon turned back to regard the smoldering enemy camp.
333 AR WINTER
FORT RIZON’S WALL WAS A JOKE.
Barely ten feet high and only one thick, the entire city’s defenses were less than the meanest of a Damaji’s dozen palaces. The Watchers didn’t even need their steel-shod ladders; most simply leapt to catch the lip of the tiny wall and pulled themselves up and over.
“People so weak and negligent deserve to be conquered,” Hasik said. Jardir grunted but said nothing.
The advance guard of Jardir’s elite warriors had come under cover of darkness, thousands of sandaled feet crunching the fallow, snow-covered fields surrounding the city proper. As the greenlanders cowered behind their wards, the Krasians had braved the demon-infested night to advance. Even corelings gave berth to so many Holy Warriors on the move.
They gathered before the city, but the veiled warriors did not attack immediately. Men did not attack other men in the night. When dawn’s light began to fill the sky, they lowered their veils, that their enemies might see their faces.
There were a few brief grunts as the Watchers subdued the guards in the gatehouse, and then a creak as the city gates opened wide to admit Jardir’s host. With a roar, six thousand dal’Sharum warriors poured into the city.
Before the Rizonans even knew what was happening, the Krasians were upon them, kicking in doors and dragging the men out of their beds, hurling them naked into the snow.
With its seemingly endless arable land, Fort Rizon was more populous by far than Krasia, but Rizonan men were not warriors, and they fell before Jardir’s trained ranks like grass before the scythe. Those who struggled suffered torn muscle and broken bone. Those who fought, died.
Jardir looked at all of these in sorrow. Every man crippled or killed was one who could not find glory in Sharak Ka, the Great War, but it was a necessary evil. He could not forge the men of the North into a weapon against demonkind without first tempering them as the smith’s hammer did the speartip.
Women screamed as Jardir’s men tempered them in another fashion. Another necessary evil. Sharak Ka was nigh, and the coming generation of warriors had to spring from the seeds of men, not cowards.
After some time, Jardir’s son Jayan dropped to one knee in the snow before him, his speartip red with blood. “The inner city is ours, Father,” Jayan said.
Jardir nodded. “If we control the inner city, we control the plain.”
Jayan had done well on his first command. Had this been a battle against demons, Jardir would have led the charge himself, but he would not stain the Spear of Kaji with human blood. Jayan was young to wear the white veil of captain, but he was Jardir’s firstborn, Blood of the Deliverer himself. He was strong, impervious to pain, and warrior and cleric alike stepped with reverence around him.
“Many have fled,” Asome added, appearing at his brother’s back. “They will warn the hamlets, who will flee also, escaping the cleansing of Evejan law.”
Jardir looked at him. Asome was a year younger than his brother, smaller and more slender. He was clad in a dama’s white robes without armor or weapon, but Jardir was not fooled. His second son was easily the more ambitious and dangerous of the two, and they more so than any of their dozens of younger brothers.
“They escape for now,” Jardir said, “but they leave their food stores behind and flee into the soft ice that covers the green lands in winter. The weak will die, sparing us the trouble of killing them, and my yoke will find the strong in due time. You have done well, my sons. Jayan, assign men to find buildings suitable to hold the captives before they die from cold. Separate the boys for Hannu Pash. If we can beat the Northern weakness out of them, perhaps some can rise above their fathers. The strong men we will use as fodder in battle, and the weak will be slaves. Any women of fertile age may be bred.”
Jayan struck a fist to his chest and nodded.
“Asome, СКАЧАТЬ