"L. Sprague De Camp - The Goblin Tower" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

armored horsemen, with the scarlet hour-glass of Xylar on their
white surcoats, patrolled the edge of the field.

Overhead, a white sun blazed in a cloudless sky. A puffy little
wind ruffled the leaves of the oaks and poplars and gums that
fenced the field. It fluttered the red-and-white pennants that
streamed from the tops of the flagpoles at the corners of the
scaffold. A few of the leaves of the gums had already turned from
green to scarlet.

Seated among the notables, Chancellor Turonus answered the
barbarian's question: "We have never had trouble in finding
candidates, Prince Vilimir. Behold how they throng about the
western side of the scaffold!"

"Will the head be thrown yonder?" asked Prince Vilimir
around his forefinger, wherewith he was trying to pry loose a
piece of roast from between his teeth. Although he was
clean-shaven, Vilimir's long, light, gray-streaked hair, fur cap,
fur jacket, and horsehide boots with the hair on gave him a
shaggy look. His many massive ornaments of gold and silver
tinkled when he moved. He had led the losing faction in an
intertribal quarrel over who should be the next cham of the
Gendings and hence was in exile. His rival, who was also his
uncle, now ruled that fierce nomadic horde.

Turonus nodded. "Aye, and the catcher shall be our new king."
He was stout and middle-aged, swathed in a voluminous azure
cloak against the chill of the first cool day of autumn. "The Chief
Justice will cast the thing yonder. It is a rule that the king must
let his hair grow long, to give the judge something to grasp. Once
a king had his whole head shaven the night before the ceremony,
and the executioner had to pierce the ears for a cord. Most
embarrassing."

"By Greipnek's beard, an ungrateful wight!" said Vilimir, a
wolfish grin splitting his lean, scarred face. "As if a lustrum of
royal luxe were not enoughтАж Be that not King Jorian now?" The
Shvenish prince spoke Novarian with fair fluency, but with a
northern accent that made "Jorian" into "Zhorian."

"Aye," said the Chancellor, as a little procession marched
slowly through the lane kept open by soldiers between the South
Gate and the scaffold.

"He took me hunting last month," said Vilimir. "He struck me
as a man of spiritтАФfor a sessor, that is." He used a word peculiar
to the nomads of Shven, meaning a non-nomad or sedentary
person. Among nomads, the word was a term of contempt, but
the Chancellor saw fit to ignore this. The exile continued: "I also