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Автор Ричард Ли Байерс
Richard Lee Byers
The Reaver
When the trials begin,
in soul-torn solitude despairing,
the hunter waits alone.
The companions emerge
from fast-bound ties of fate
uniting against a common foe.
When the shadows descend,
in Hell-sworn covenant unswerving
the blighted brothers hunt,
and the godborn appears,
in rose-blessed abbey reared,
arising to loose the godly spark.
When the harvest time comes,
in hate-fueled mission grim unbending,
the shadowed reapers search.
The adversary vies
with fiend-wrought enemies,
opposing the twisting schemes of Hell.
When the tempest is born,
as storm-tossed waters rise uncaring,
the promised hope still shines.
And the reaver beholds
the dawn-born chosen’s gaze,
transforming the darkness into light.
When the battle is lost,
through quake-tossed battlefields unwitting
the seasoned legions march,
but the sentinel flees
with once-proud royalty,
protecting devotion’s fragile heart.
When the ending draws near,
with ice-locked stars unmoving,
the threefold threats await,
and the herald proclaims,
in war-wrecked misery,
announcing the dying of an age.
CHAPTER ONE
The cold rain hammered down like a waterfall. Combined with the gray clouds shrouding the sky from horizon to horizon, it was blinding. Peering around the corner of a peasant’s cottage at more of the shacks, sheds, and pigpens that made up the ramshackle village, Anton Marivaldi took solace in the reflection that the enemy couldn’t see him and his crew either.
Then darts of crimson light leaped out of the gloom and streaked at Atala.
Like her captain, the pirate with the wheat-blond braids had been trying to spot the foe, and now she sought to duck back down behind the donkey cart she’d been using for cover. She was too slow, though, and a pair of the arcane missiles pierced her face. They didn’t leave holes or any sort of visible wounds, but Atala flopped down in the mud, shuddered for a moment, and then lay still.“I stand corrected,” Anton murmured. “Someone can see. ” Perhaps the wizard had worked magic to sharpen his sight.
From beneath a broad-brimmed hat that shielded from the rain narrow gray eyes set in a long, dour countenance, Naraxes Corieth said, “I say we retreat before the wretches circle around and block the way back to the ship. ”
Anton snorted. “How likely is that?”
“How likely was it the child would turn out to have bodyguards,” his first mate retorted, “and one of them a mage? How likely was it that all these farmers would risk their lives to protect him?”
Anton smiled. “It’s the little surprises that make life interesting. ”
“Curse it, Captain, one man fell overboard before we even got here because you sailed us into the teeth of that storm-”
“We needed to reach this place before the boy moved on. ”
