“It is an additional concern for him, to wait for you and to feed the foreign army of many thousands. He will only send for help when he sees us!”
“Well, okay, suppose he is confident in the inviolability of his walls, and this is so. We will storm them, and the army that has come to his aid will grab us by the ass!”
“Don't run ahead of the horses, Lis!”
And Nikto, as if looking for support, looked at Kors. He was taken aback, he clearly didn’t expect that Nikto would turn to him for help in a conversation. Because, according to Kors, Nik himself did a good job of “ransoming”, all the more, doing it in the style of those with whom he argued. But it seemed that he wanted some clever arguments in his support. Kors froze, and Lis, as luck would have it, also looked at him:
“Well, speak! Don’t stand in my throat, fall further!”
“Alis, slow and steady wins the race,” Kors hardly uttered, “and haste makes waste.”
Kors was terribly ashamed of what nonsense he had just said. But, having felt the emotions of Nikto, he realized that he was quite pleased with him, and diligently memorized the expressions, while correctly putting them on the shelf to the phrase: “business before pleasure”.
“We will capture this Ore town just like that edge Fort across the river, remember?” Nikto told Lis.
“What?!”
“Only you and I will change places.”
“Are you nuts? We got fucked up in that Fort!”
“Under Ore town all the land is dug for many kilometers. I and my unclean ones will go to their very heart through holes through which no man can crawl. We will take over the city from the inside. And you will be outside!”
Lis fell silent, considering the words of Nikto:
“Nik, this is too risky.”
“When was it different with us?”
Lis, seeming to calm down a little, turned to Tol.
“Well, have you done anything?”
“You bet!” Tol was delighted, seeing that the tension had subsided. “Come on, I'll show you how I put things in order here. You know, Lis, I have an ideal here!”
Lis just shook his head in annoyance.
They went out into the yard. Kors and Nikto put on masks again, and Karina covered her face with a cape.
Kors with disgust, since the mask hid the expression on his face, looked at the naked, torn corpse of Tishka. On the body, the softest and, apparently, the tastiest parts were eaten off by the wolf. The face was eaten, there were no eyes, lips, cheeks. The genitals were eaten away, the soft tissues on the forearms and thighs had bite marks from powerful jaws. The abdomen and chest were opened, but the entrails were not touched, the predator ate only tender liver and the boy’s heart. The mutilated corpse of Tishka, exposed for all to see, looked reproachfully at the living with empty eye sockets. On a board nailed above his head, it was written: “Went AWOL to the lake” and was painted a lake with blue paint and a huge figure of a grinning wolf with black paint. It was drawn very well. It could be said, intelligibly.