"Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 07 - The Dragon and the G" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

life-saver on occasion in this bloodstained fourteenth centuryтАФSir Brian Neville-Smythe. He had
been worried abut Brian lately: Brian had been preoccupied with the recent growth in Royal
taxes. He was hardly alone in his feelings. But while such as the Earl of Oxford were powerful
enough to talk so about them in public, and get away with it, Brian and those he spoke to were
not.

Jim put it out of his mind. One worry at a time.

He glanced down and saw that, although the attackers had not been scared off, they had
withdrawn from the walls and clustered in a tight group that seemed to be arguing among
themselves, faces occasionally flashing upward, like table plates being dried in bright sunlight.

Good. They could watch him apparently heading off to the west and wonder. Where was he going
and why? What might he bring back?

Actually, his line of travel was not straight west, but the beginning of a circle that would swing
him around Malencontri at a distance of a mile or so. Dragons, like most large birds of prey, had
near-telescopic distance vision. He could keep the Castle and its attackers in sight without being
suspected, while he tried to figure out some way to handle the situation.

It was too bad he couldn't think of a way for boomps to sound in the earth around where the
peasants stood. At the very least that should scare off half of themтАФ

"M'Lord!" roared a distant voice, completely ruining his train of thought. "M'Lord! Oh, m'Lord!"

Jim gritted his teeth, refusing to look toward the voice. It was far too low-pitchedтАФabout that of
a good operatic basso hitting a baritone noteтАФand far too high off the ground, to be any but the
one possible source of interruption he had completely forgotten could reach him here in mid-air.



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 Dickson, Gordon R. - Dragon Knight 07 - The Dragon and the Gnarly King (v1.0) (html)proofed

"M'Lord, m'Lord!" This time, the voice rose half an octave, to an anxious pitch.

Jim sighed, and looked back over his shoulder. Sure enough, there, less than two hundred yards
distant and soaring along on a river of air coming to meet his, was another dragon. A young, half-
grown dragon. Past any doubt, one of the younger generation of the Cliffside Dragons, his
imagination pumped full of lurid renditions of Jim's adventures. The pumper being Secoh, the
feisty little mere-dragon who had been with Jim, Brian, Dafydd ap Hywel, Aargh, and SmrgolтАФ
granduncle of Corbash, whose dragon body Jim had been inтАФwhen they had all won their
famous battle with the Dark Powers at the Loathly Tower.

Possibly, this young Cliffsider had a message for him. If he did not, he was an unusually brave
immature dragon to approach Jim now, on his own initiative.

He was about two-thirds the size he would become as an adult, certainly no more than sixty or
seventy years old; and his voice had not yet brokenтАФ otherwise Jim would have heard it
booming at him from twice the distance.