Wrath of a Mad God. Raymond Feist

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СКАЧАТЬ never seen before. The creature released its hold on the thrashing man. The second man was not as lucky: the elf who came to stand over him drove his sword point through the attached Void-darter, straight into the prisoner. Both died instantly.

      Kaspar ducked as another flyer attempted to wrap itself around his head, and as the creature grazed his scalp he felt a painful, icy tingle as if something was sucking the heat from his skin. Ice burn, he thought, remembering as a child what it was like to be hunting in the mountains with his father, and touching a dagger’s blade that had grown so cold it peeled a layer of skin off as his father pulled it from his hand.

      Abruptly, a huge enveloping energy surrounded the column, as the elven spell-casters responded. The Void-darters turned and fled and the leader of the elves shouted, ‘Run! They will come back with their masters!’

      Ignoring the dead man on the road, Kaspar yelled, ‘Grab the wounded and carry them!’ He picked up the man who had been struck in the leg, found him almost icy to the touch, and hoisted him across his shoulders, carrying him as he would an elk he had killed in the hunt. The man groaned weakly, but Kaspar had no intention of leaving anyone behind if he could help it. Even at the height of his madness, when under the influence of the evil magician Leso Varen, Kaspar had held to certain principles that had inspired personal loyalty of his men, and one was fundamental: on the battlefield every soldier was his brother – no living man was willingly left behind. Kaspar admitted that he might have been a murderous bastard at one time, but he was a loyal murderous bastard.

      Kaspar kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, and after running for twenty yards could see a wooden palisade ahead through a gap in the trees. The glimpse was enough to tell him that it was a fairly substantial fortification, with the battlement a good twenty feet above the foundation. The soldier in him quickly calculated the difficulty of taking such a position, uphill, while a punishing rain of arrows fell on you as you moved up to the base of the wall … nothing a skilled company of engineers supported by disciplined soldiers couldn’t quickly deal with, but he suspected there was more to the fortification than met the eye. Even so, a couple of turtles with sappers inside could probably dig up the foundation of two or three pales in the wall within an hour. He glanced at the road as he ran and thought that a good-sized covered ram with supporting archers could probably breach the gate in half the time. Unless magic was involved …

      On top of this hill, snug against a cliff face some hundred yards or more behind, stood a series of wooden buildings fashioned in a manner Kaspar had never seen before, and all of them were surrounded by the massive wooden wall.

      As they approached, Kaspar appreciated how hundreds of trees must have been cleared to form an open killing ground. An earthen redoubt had been erected in front of the palisade. The road now fell away on both sides in a manner that would funnel attackers in front of the gate into a more confined area or have them falling off to one side or the other so that they’d end up standing below the wall, in peril of murderous bowfire from above.

      To his right Kaspar could see that years of fighting had despoiled these grounds. There was something odd about it, he thought as he struggled to get his wounded soldier to safety, but he couldn’t quite put a name to it. There was something different about this battlefield, something sensed more than seen.

      A howling erupted behind the fleeing men and Kaspar turned around completely, to see what pursued them.

      Void-darters sped in from behind, but in close pursuit came beings that could only be described as demons out of some deep pit of hell. Cloaked in tatters of charcoal, inky black beings sat astride creatures that seemed to be the demented product of a fevered delirium.

      The animals looked like elongated wolves, but had an almost feline motion. Like the flying entities, they were things made of shadow and darkness, but these creatures had pale milky white eyes.

      The riders were roughly humanoid in shape, but their forms flowed around the edges, and from them a fog or smoke trailed behind them leaving grey wisps that were almost instantly lost in the evening’s gloom. They howled and Kaspar saw weapons in their hands, long blades that shimmered and sparked with angry energies of the darkest red hue.

      ‘Ban-ath protect me!’ said Jim Dasher as he edged close to Kaspar.

      ‘Run!’ shouted Kaspar, for some of the men had stopped in muted horror.

      Men broke in ragged formation, the elves now ignoring their role as captors, everyone trying for the safety of the walls. Kaspar expected to see archers ready to cover the retreat, but instead was greeted only by the sight of a few faces above the ramparts and none of them apparently in possession of a bow.

      Burdened by the man he carried, Kaspar struggled towards the keep, again finding that will which had made him a dangerous foe before becoming a valued ally to the Conclave of Shadows. ‘Where are your archers?’ he shouted.

      The elves’ leader turned and said, ‘Arrows are of no use against their masters. We must get through the gates!’ He turned and fled, unconcerned apparently whether Kaspar and the prisoners reached safety before mayhem overtook them.

      Kaspar laboured to keep up, for their refuge was only a hundred yards or so ahead. The first of the elves were already there and Kaspar was horrified to see that it was his men who were falling behind. ‘Damn you! Help us!’ he shouted.

      ‘No one can help you!’ shouted back the leader. ‘You must reach the gates or you will perish.’

      ‘I’ll be damned if I’m going to be caught like a hare run down by wolves!’ Kaspar turned and yelled at one of his soldiers, ‘Take this man!’ As easily as if tossing a dressed elk to his cook, he threw the man over the soldier’s shoulders. The soldier almost collapsed under the sudden weight, but he hitched himself up and moved on as quickly as possible.

      Kaspar saw that the nearest rider would be on top of him in only a few moments. He readied his belt as a weapon again, remembering with evil irony how he had stood just so a few years ago with a captive’s chains as his only weapon while nomads from the hills of Novindus had ridden down on him.

      From his right came a voice. ‘I have an idea.’

      Jim Dasher was standing at his side, holding two large rocks. Kaspar nodded, and took one.

      Jim waited until the rider was almost on top of them, then pulled back his arm and threw.

      His rock sped through the air and struck the rider full in the face. It passed through as if piercing smoke, but the rider flinched, pulling up with a startled cry.

      ‘The wolf!’ shouted Dasher. He picked up another rock and hurled it just as Kaspar unloaded his rock with as much strength as he could right at the creature’s muzzle. The wolf-like mount snarled, a distant hollow sound, and the rock bounced off, causing it to falter.

      Dasher hurled a rock at the creature’s foot, causing it to stumble and collapse on the trail. The rider might have been immune to Kaspar’s rock, but he seemed to abide by the same rules as any mortal rider when his mount stumbled for he flew over the creature’s haunches.

      Kaspar shouted, ‘Run!’

      He had bought those ahead of him mere seconds, but those seconds were the difference between safety and destruction. He saw Dasher scoop up one last rock, turn, throw, and then run. Realizing that the young thief was faster and not wanting to be the only one who failed to reach the gate, the former Duke of Olasko dug deep inside himself and found just enough strength to reach the threshold stride for stride with the younger man.

      They СКАЧАТЬ