Читать книгу The Raven's Warrior - Vincent Pratchett - Страница 17

Revenge

Recognition struck like a thunder clap. He knew this monk. His features had changed little—he could still smell the dirty little boy.

Even from horseback the general had to look up at the sole survivor. The monk fought like a wild animal high upon the hill of those who had fallen under his blade. Steel moved too fast around the monk to be seen, but on the slower moving hilt of the young monk’s sword, the general glimpsed a pentagram within a circle.

The face of the monk was almost completely covered by the blood of those that had tried to take his life. The vivid colors, the smell of dying, the sounds of agony; these were memories seared into the mind of the general. But it was the eyes of the monk, eyes that spoke of true power that branded the general’s very soul.

Amid the chaos of war and destruction the general saw a man at peace. In the chilling heart of combat he witnessed monks inspired and emboldened by this man’s true courage. He saw men follow without question. No amount of blood could obscure the terrible truth: this monk was everything that he was not, and everything that he had wanted, all his life, to be.

Like a jackal he waited until the monk was fighting with the strongest and largest soldier in his command. With the monk engaged face to face with the massive soldier, horse and rider moved in quietly from behind. For the task at hand, timing was everything.

The monk continued to fight with a strength that verged on legendary. The general paused while his archers took their positions, and then he shouted the order to fire. Horse and general charged forward and upward to take the head. He moved quickly now to silence the voice of inner demons as he charged toward glory.

To the eye all three things happened at the same time. Ten arrows hit their mark, the last sweep of the falling monk’s blade cut through the huge soldier’s weapon and found the heart, and the blade of the general was launched upon its deadly journey to an unprotected neck. But at the edge of life and death, time slows and events that seem simultaneous unfold in separate clarity.

Mah Lin did not see the severed tip of the giant’s saber flying past his shoulder for the arrows landed and his body dropped. He did not sense the impending blow to his neck, nor hear the aspiring assassin behind him scream and fall backwards as that forged steel tip sliced through his face, cleaving bone from sinew. He did not feel the hulking weight of adversary crush out his last breath, whispering through arrow holes as it crashed down and buried him.

The lower jaw clung precariously by shredded flesh to its place upon the general’s features. It tried to form the order to find and remove the library, but it could not. Through the pain and the fog of seething hatred, the general looked back to where the last monk had stood. The giant lay dead and fallen, and the monk as if by magic had vanished into the thin morning air.

The general surrendered to the darkness.