Читать книгу Cat Marquis De Richelieu - Vyacheslav Miroshnikov - Страница 5

But then all of a sudden the cart rushed forward, and although the man attempted to pull the reins and slow down at that very moment, it would not help. The horse, no matter what, only ran faster. What is the matter with her, the man thought, and accidentally glanced up out of the corner of his eye. His face twisted.

“Zaldan! This is Zaldan!” he cried excitedly. “Lisa, run faster into the forest! We need to make our way there before he flies out of the clouds!”

De Richelieu stared in horror at the rapidly darkening sky. It was covered with clouds, but those were not rain clouds, but rather something kind of artificial in appearance. There was something intimidating and menacing in them. But not only that. At the same time, a black dot appeared on the horizon, very rapidly growing in sizes, and then it was already circling above the forest in front of them.

“Faster, Lisa!” shouted the horseman, and cut the air with his whip. “Speed up, we are almost there!”

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Lisa dashed the best she could, and literally in a moment later they were in the dense shadow of the nearest trees. They had no other protection at that moment. De Richelieu was seriously scared. And his fear got only stronger, his paws trembled, his ears stuck up, his mustache was moving. His heart was pounding furiously, and in the usually reasonable head of a talking cat there was a feverish thought: no forest could save us; we need to run and run as far away as we can, or like a mole, dig ourselves deep into the ground.

“My sweet mother Marquise!” the cat whispered with trembling voice, seeing how quickly the plain-looking black dot not simply grows in size, but turns into a huge and mighty bird.

It was an outlandish black eagle about twice as large as a horse, with an immense wingspan, and with knife-sharp claws. And the size of each claw was far bigger than the size of a small cat. His eyes were bright green, and it seemed that they pierced right through this dense dark forest.

And yet, our fugitives managed to dodge the merciless predator. They literally crashed into a loophole between the densely growing trees, but the eagle did not calm down and kept ramming the branches of tall trees at the same tremendous speed, trying to reach the people and animals he had chosen as his victims. At some point, he almost made it, and yet a densely overgrown forest protected the fellow travelers. The angry eagle flew up sharply again in no mood to let them go, and again began to look for an appropriate crevice between the trees.

“Zaldan is already above us! Quicker, quicker into the forest!” the man continued to scream, hurrying a horse who already was choking from running, “Quicker!”

And events were taking an ever more dramatic turn.

De Richelieu also saw how Zaldan rushed down straight at them. However, fear did not make the cat defenseless, but, on the contrary, woke up his instinct of self-preservation. Without hesitation, De Richelieu jumped off the cart and immediately ran as fast as he could, not knowing where, just to get away from this impudent and importunate bird, from these terrible gloomy clouds, which could be the only shelter of the black eagle. Marquis turned back only once to see what was happening behind his back. He saw the horseman jump off the cart and run away, and the horse rushed to a huge oak tree and jumped into a deep moat together with the cart.

“Zaldan! Zaldan!” Marquis continued to yell meanwhile, as if he wanted to warn the inhabitants of this whole forest about the terrible danger that threatened them, but, to his surprise, not a single animal was at his sight. I was as if they all knew in advance and hid all as one in a timely manner.

Real clouds began to quickly overtake the sky; somewhere high above flashed a lightning, and then rolled a thunder. De Richelieu was still rushing between the trees and just when he wanted to stop to find shelter, again he saw a huge shadow, as if it was pursuing him. Yes, it was the same Zaldan with his terrible green eyes. Marquis immediately lost the desire to stop and seek shelter. Fear drove him forward, and he ran over hedge and ditch and not knowing where, until he finally crossed the forest. Ahead of him some houses appeared on the outskirts.

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