trik: переводы

→‘Come on, lads!’ he shouted at the men around him. ‘Shoot! Shoot!’

→Gaunt lowered his bow, watched a few Northmen in the crowd topple over as the rest of the volley flickered down into them. From this height, the bolts from a heavy flatbow could split their shields and punch through chain mail easily as a lady’s gown. One of them threw his weapons down and ran off hooting, clutching his stomach, left a gently curving trail through the crops. Gaunt had no way of knowing if his own bolt had found a mark or not, but it hardly mattered. It was all about quantity. Crank, load, level, shoot, crank, load …

→‘Bet it does. Where did you put that ring?’

→Lightsleep couldn’t move hardly. Everything was going blurry. ‘By the … dead, it … hurts.’

→Scabna knelt, started to unbutton Lightsleep’s jerkin. ‘Let’s have a look here.’

→‘Bloody … I’m stuck right … through.’ He had to spit blood out, gurgling with every word. He couldn’t kneel any more, it was hurting him too much. He slumped over on his side. Seemed a shitty way to go back to the mud, but maybe they all are. Boots hammered around him as men started thumping up that hill, spraying spots of dirt in his face.

→Scabna stared at him, shield up to cover them both. ‘Lightsleep, what the hell?’

→There was a thud and an arrowhead stuck out of his jerkin. He spent a silent moment just staring at it, then he took a great whooping breath in and screamed. ‘Ah, fuck!’ He whimpered, shuddered, pain stabbing into his armpit as he tried to breathe again, coughed blood down his front, dropped on his knees.

→Lightsleep had swallowed about enough of that fool’s carping, only Chief ’cause he was some friend to one of Golden’s sons. He twisted sideways, snarling, ‘You get up the fucking hill, you…’

→They hopped over a ditch patched with brown puddles and were out of the trampled crops at the foot of the slope. ‘Up the hill, you bastards!’ screeched Scabna, waving his axe.

→Now they’d climbed a little higher they could see all the way to the woods up north, and the land between was full of men. Black Dow’s Carls, and Tenways’, and Ironhead’s too. Thralls surging after. Thousands of ’em, all streaming across towards the Heroes. Lightsleep had never seen so many fighters in one place, not even when he fought with Bethod’s army. Not at the Cumnur, or Dunbrec, or in the High Places. He’d half a mind to let ’em take the Heroes while he hung back, maybe pleading a twisted ankle, but he weren’t going to raise a sharp dowry for his daughters on a cheap ring and a little sword, now, was he?

→‘Will you look at that,’ Scabna grunted.

→There were Union men up on the Heroes, he could see metal glinting round the drystone wall near the top, spears pricking the sky. He kept his shield up, peering over the rim. Didn’t want to get stuck with one of those evil little arrows they used. Get stuck with one o’ those, you won’t never get yourself unstuck.

→‘All right, all right!’ Lightsleep jogged on after the others, towards the hill. Upset at not getting the chance to go through the Southerners’ pockets, maybe get his boots off. It’d all be swept by the pickers and the women following after now. Beggar bastards too cowardly to fight, turning a profit out of other men’s work. A disgrace, but he guessed there was no stopping it. Facts of life, like flies and bad weather.

→‘Get on!’ Scabna dragged one scavenger up and booted him in the arse to set him going. ‘Bloody get on!’

→‘You turn for the hill,’ grunted Lightsleep, legs still sore from all that running, throat sore from all that screaming besides. ‘Hah!’ Finally got the Union lad’s ring off. Held it up to the light and frowned. Just some polished rock with a face cut into it, but he guessed it might fetch a couple of silvers. Tucked it into his jerkin. Took the lad’s sword for good measure and stuck it through his belt, though it was a light little toothpick of a thing and the hilt rattled.

→Sergeant Lock charged forward, wasted bravery, hacked a lump from the edge of a shield. The shield had a bridge painted on it. He chopped at it again, just as another Northman ran up and hit him with an axe. He was knocked sideways, then back the other way by a sword that left a long scratch across his helmet and a deep cut across his face. He spun, arms up like a dancer, then was barged over in the rush and lost in the barley.

→He looked up at the tide of howling men, open-mouthed. You hear about this kind of thing, of course, but you assume it won’t happen to you. You assume you’re more important than that. He’d done none of the things he’d promised himself he’d do by the time he was thirty. He wanted to drop his sword and sit down. Caught sight of his ring and lifted his hand to look at it. Emlin’s face carved into the stone. Didn’t look likely he’d be coming back for her now. Probably she’d marry that cousin of hers after all. Marrying cousins, a deplorable business.

→Lasmark could only swallow and ready himself as his men flung down their weapons around him. As they turned and ran for the river or the hill, too far, far too far away. As the makeshift line of his company and the company beside them dissolved leaving only a few knots of the most stunned and hard-bitten to face the Northmen. He could see how many there were, now. Hundreds of them. Hundreds upon hundreds. A flung spear impaled a man beside him with a thud, and he fell screaming. Lasmark stared at him for a moment. Stelt. He’d been a baker.

→The Northmen were already horrifyingly close, breaking through the nearest hedgerow. He could pick out faces across their line. Snarling, screaming, grinning faces. Like animals, weapons raised high as they bounded on through the barley. Lasmark took a few steps backwards without thinking. Sergeant Lock stood beside him, his jaw muscles clenched.