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Mordan shook his head. “Not the one I’m looking for,” he replied.

Brey stood a few paces away, looking up at the ruins. Mordan left Tarrel to his work and went to join her.

“Well,” he said quietly, “you can say ‘I told you so.’ “

“Of course,” Brey said, “I don’t know how much is left. Have you decided what you’re going to tell your family yet?”

Mordan looked at her narrowly.

“That’s my guess,” she went on. “Tarrel’s funding this trip by himself, so I doubt you have a rich client like he does. Yet you’ve spent months—maybe years—trying to track down these Vedykar Lancers. You’ve taken dangerous jobs in the Mournland to survive, and you’ve never given up. Got to be a relative if you ask me.” She paused, her face suddenly dropping. “Or a sweetheart,” she said, softly.

Mordan thought of his brother and chuckled bitterly. “It’s not a sweetheart,” he said. He turned back to Tarrel, who was getting back to his feet and stowing his tools.

“Not much to say,” said the inquisitive. “Violent death, extreme forces—just about every bone in his body is broken—and no sign the body’s been tampered with since it got here. If I had to guess, I’d say he hit the ground hard—maybe he fell from a great height, or maybe he was thrown a long way.”

Mordan jerked his head in the direction of the ruins.

“Like from way over there?” he asked.

Tarrel shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said. “Though it’s hard to tell when the evidence has been disturbed by a magical cataclysm.”

Chapter 12

The Fort

Olarune 21, 999 YK

They climbed the hill to the fort. It had originally been a strong, square structure with battlemented walls linking its four towers. Now the walls were rent with gaping holes, and only one of the towers stood more than a few feet high.

Against one wall was a huge pile of corpses. They approached it carefully, half-expecting the bodies to rise up and attack, but nothing happened. There were all races and nationalities, thrown together in a heap by some unknown force. The only thing they had in common were round holes all over their bodies, as if they had been struck by a large number of heavy spears.

They picked their way across the rubble-strewn interior of the fort, toward one of the ruined towers. All that remained were a few courses of stone, blackened on the inside as if by fire.

“Here,” said Brey, pointing. At her feet, half-hidden by fallen stone, was a stone staircase leading down. She picked up a stone slab almost as big as she was, and tossed it aside.

Mordan and Tarrel put their shoulders to another block, pushing it out of the way. Within a few minutes, there was enough of an opening to squeeze through.

A sudden noise made them look up. Something was coming, and it sounded big. Mordan threw his elven cloak over himself, while Brey and Tarrel crouched behind a mound of rubble.

The thing was immense—almost as tall as the blood-creature that had attacked them, but hunched and massive. It looked something like a warforged—they had all seen the terrifying power of the huge, barely sentient warforged titans on the battlefields of the Last War—but it had a pair of three-fingered hands instead of the great axes and hammers with which those awesome killing machines were normally armed. Its segmented carapace was covered with spikes, and they knew at once where the piled corpses had come from. There were fresh bodies all over the thing, impaled like insects.

They watched as the great construct stumped over to the corpse pile. It began picking the corpses off its carapace, adding them to the heap. When the last body had been removed, the thing turned and marched off the way it had come. Creeping to the shelter of a broken wall, the three watched it until it was out of sight. Mordan looked at Brey.

“You didn’t tell us about that,” he said.

“I never saw it before,” Brey answered.

“Well,” said Tarrel, “I guess that’s how they got the raw materials for their necromantic research.”

Brey scowled into the distance. “One of the ways,” she said. “They needed living subjects to make vampires.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” said Tarrel, standing up and taking in the ruins with a sweep of his arm. “This is—was—Cyre. What’s a Karrnathi research establishment doing here? Surely the Cyrans would have found it?”

“This part of Gyre was pretty much anybody’s,” Brey said, “at least, when we were captured. We’d been behind the lines for more than a month, and we’d seen more Karrns than Cyrans in that time. My guess is, this operation moved around, following the front lines. Living or dead, they needed fresh materials.”

They gathered round the staircase.

“Ladies first,” said Mordan.


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Сердце дракона. Том 7
Сердце дракона. Том 7

Он пережил войну за трон родного государства. Он сражался с монстрами и врагами, от одного имени которых дрожали души целых поколений. Он прошел сквозь Море Песка, отыскал мифический город и стал свидетелем разрушения осколков древней цивилизации. Теперь же путь привел его в Даанатан, столицу Империи, в обитель сильнейших воинов. Здесь он ищет знания. Он ищет силу. Он ищет Страну Бессмертных.Ведь все это ради цели. Цели, достойной того, чтобы тысячи лет о ней пели барды, и веками слагали истории за вечерним костром. И чтобы достигнуть этой цели, он пойдет хоть против целого мира.Даже если против него выступит армия – его меч не дрогнет. Даже если император отправит легионы – его шаг не замедлится. Даже если демоны и боги, герои и враги, объединятся против него, то не согнут его железной воли.Его зовут Хаджар и он идет следом за зовом его драконьего сердца.

Кирилл Сергеевич Клеванский

Фантастика / Самиздат, сетевая литература / Боевая фантастика / Героическая фантастика / Фэнтези