Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 404

"Nonsense," Hajjaj said. Aye, fall and winter were the rainy season in Zuwayza, but the day- the whole week- had been fine and dry and sunny. But then his ears also caught the low rumble the younger man had heard before him. He frowned. "That is thunder. But it can't be."

He and Qutuz both found the answer more slowly than they should have. They both found it at the same time, too. "Eggs!" Qutuz blurted, while Hajjaj exclaimed, "The Unkerlanters!"

Ever since the war began, King Swemmel's dragonfliers had occasionally visited Bishah. They hadn't come in large numbers; they could hardly afford to, not with Unkerlant locked in a life-or-death struggle against Algarve. As far as Hajjaj could tell, they'd mounted the attacks more to remind the Zuwayzin that Swemmel hadn't forgotten about them than for any other reason. The Unkerlanter dragons had also done their best to hit the Algarvian ministry in Bishah, but they'd never quite succeeded.

Hajjaj didn't need long to realize this morning would be different. "They're dropping a good many eggs today, aren't they?" he remarked, doing his best to stay calm- or at least not to show he was anything else but.

"Aye, your Excellency, so they are." Qutuz took his cue from Hajjaj, but he had less practice at seeming dispassionate while actually frightened or furious.

More roars of bursting eggs beat against Hajjaj's ears. They were coming closer to the palace now, too, so he no longer had any doubt what they were. The ground started shaking under his fundament, as if at an earthquake. Pen cases and leaves of paper on his desk trembled and quivered.

"Perhaps," Qutuz said, "we ought to look for shelter."

"Where?" Hajjaj asked, not at all rhetorically. He'd read that people in Setubal and Sulingen and other places that often came under attack from the air took refuge in cellars. Cellars, however, had never been a part of Zuwayzi architecture, and no one had ever dreamt the Unkerlanters would really pummel Bishah.

"I'm getting under my desk," Qutuz declared, and hurried off to do just that. Hajjaj nodded approval. It wasn't a bad notion at all. He crawled under his own. For once, he wished he were in the habit of working at it in a chair rather than sitting on the floor; he would have had more room under there. His joints creaked as he tried to fold himself into as small a space as he could.

Then the first eggs fell on the royal palace. For the next little while, Hajjaj had nothing whatever to do with whether he lived or died. The ground shook. Windows blew out. Walls fell in. Chunks of the roof came crashing down. One of them landed where he'd been sitting while talking with his secretary. Another came down on the desk, but wasn't heavy enough to crush it- and, incidentally, Hajjaj.

Someone was screaming. After a moment, Hajjaj realized that was his own voice. He bit down hard on his lower lip to make himself stop. Then he wondered why he bothered. Plenty of people, surely, were screaming right now. But he kept on biting his lip instead. Pride is a strange thing, he thought, a strange thing, but a very strong one.