Читать онлайн «The Dark Defiles»
Автор Ричард Морган
Richard K. Morgan
THE DARK DEFILES
Dinnae ask me how majic works… but wun way or the uthir it canny be oll its craked up tae be or ah suppose the wurld woold be toatally fukin wunderffil an happy an aw that an folk woold live in peece an harminy an so on; thatill be the day, if ye ask me. Enyway its no like that ataw, so it isnay, an just as well to, say I, coz utherwyse thay wooldnae need peepil like me (an itid be ded fukin boarin to).
Naw, ahm doin no to bad these days; servises mutch in dimand…
Call for justice or explanation, and the sea will thunder back with its mute clamour. Men’s accounts with the gods do not balance.
BOOK I
Arse End of the World
Once there was a High Quest to Northern Lands, a Bright Fellowship led out in Sunlit Glory by three Heroes from the Great War, companied with the Finest Warriors and Wise Men of Empire, and guided by an Angel fallen from On High…
CHAPTER 1
“Well, that’s that, I suppose. ”
Ringil Eskiath weighed the desiccated human jawbone glumly in the palm of his hand. He crouched on the edge of the opened grave, fighting off a vague urge to jump down into it.
He rubbed at his unshaven chin instead. Three days of stubble, rasping on calloused fingers, itching on hollow cheeks. His cloak, puddled about him where he crouched, was soiled at the border and soaking up water from the rain-drenched grass. The shoulder of his sword arm nagged from the unrelenting damp.
He shut out the ache and brooded on what lay below him in the grave.
They’d come a long way for this.
There wasn’t much—shards of wood that might once have formed a casket, a few long strips of leather, cured stiff and crumbling.
A mess of small bone fragments, like the leavings of some overenthusiastic soothsayer on the scry…Gil sighed and levered himself back to his feet. Tossed the jawbone back in with the rest.
“Fucking waste of five months. ”
“My lord?”
Shahn, the marine sergeant, who’d climbed back out of the grave and now waited close by the mounds of earth his men had dug out. Behind him, the work party stood around, soil- and sweat-streaked, entrenching tools in hand, scowling against the weather. Whoever dug this plot all those centuries ago, they’d chosen a spot close to the cliffs, and right now there was a blustery wind coming in off the ocean, laced with fistfuls of sleet and the promise of another storm. The three Hironish guides they’d hired back in Ornley already had their hoods up—they stood farther from the grave, watching the sky and conversing in low tones.
Ringil brushed the traces of dirt off his hands.
“We’re all done here,” he announced loudly. “If this is the Illwrack Changeling, the worms sorted him out for us awhile back. Stow tools, let’s get back to the boats. ”
A tremor of hesitation—hands working at tool handles, feet shifting. The sergeant cleared his throat. Gestured halfheartedly at the soft-mounded earth beside the grave.
