Книга только для ознакомления
."
For long minutes, the ground beneath them shook and
danced, and they hugged its surface in panic. The sky rained
dust and cinders on them, and huge winds howled overhead.
Then there came a lull, the quaking subsided, and dark
raindrops thudded into the dust around them.
One by one, the gully dwarves got to their feet. They
crowded around the Highbulp, making it almost impossible
for him to get his feet under him.
"Back off," he growled. Those nearest backed away,
creating a ripple effect in the crowd that knocked some of
those on the outside down again. Gorge stood up, tried to
dust himself off, and a large raindrop splattered on his nose.
He looked around at his gathered followers, squinting in the
darkness that had replaced the brilliant light.
Lightning split the sky overhead, illuminating
everything, and Gorges latest belch turned to a shriek of
panic. All around them were Talls - humans - armed men
with swords and axes that glistened in the storm light -
armed, determined human slavers . . . and there was
nowhere for the gully dwarves to run.
*****
The rains came and went and came again, scouring a
savaged land that never again would be as it had been
before. Gray morning light shone on silent chaos, a land
rent and ripped and devastated, a landscape of desolation,
where huge boulders lay scattered upon silt-buried slopes, a
place of sundered silence in a land torn and rent by
cataclysm.
Mountains no longer had the dagger-spire silhouettes
of yesterday, but instead presented cratered and tumbled
faces to the dawn
|
