Читать книгу Through the Thorns into the Abyss онлайн

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– Shall we fight? – Mithai suggested.

– Wait. I have a bad feeling…

The trumpet roared from the top of the local Sacred Tower. There was still plenty of time before sunset, and everyone realized that the roar was not a call to prayer. And it did not sound as usual, but shrill and piercing. The Alarm!

Soon the Outsiders arrived at the south gate. There weren’t too many of them, and they were all visibly exhausted. Nevertheless, their savage warlike appearance inspired a superstitious terror in the Cusunian peasants. Clad only in bone beads and loincloths, tall, muscular, and tattooed orange skin, they appeared as if from another world. Their long white hair was braided into multiple braids, their ears lengthened with heavy earrings. Their faces have no beards or moustaches – but they are tougher than any bearded man’s face… Their bushy eyebrows are painted black, and there is a sullenness in their eyes – but also courage. Baaths! Mercenaries from a distant, jungle-filled tropical land, which here in the north of the Empire was almost a fairy tale, a horrible fairy tale, the kind of fiction that teens scare each other at night. And now this TALE became reality, came to the home and knocked on the door.