"Watt-Evans,.Lawrence.-.Ethshar.1.-.The.Misenchanted.Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Misenchanted Sword_v1.0THE MISENCHANTED SWORD

Copyright й 1985 by Lawrence Watt Evans
e-book ver. 1.0

Dedicated to
Richard Evan Reis
and the old gang at P.I.C.


PART ONE

Wirikidor

CHAPTER 1



The marsh stank, with a sharp, briny stench that seemed to fill Valder's head.
He stared out across the maze of tall grass and shallow water for a long moment
and then reluctantly marched onward, into it. The ground gave beneath him; his
boot sank past the ankle in gray-brown muck. He muttered an obscenity, then
smiled weakly at his own annoyance and slogged forward.

The enemy, he knew, was no more than an hour behind him. The marsh was nothing
but a minor inconvenience by comparison.

To his left lay the open sea, and to his right was endless empty forest that was
probably full of northern patrols and sentinels, human or otherwise. Behind him
somewhere were the three northerners who had been pursuing him for the past four
days. Ahead of him, wet and green and stinking, lay the coastal marshes.

He could, he supposed, have turned to the right and avoided the marshes, tried
to lose his pursuers in the forest, but he had been running through forests for
four days without being able to shake them off his trail. At least the marshes
would be different.

After half a dozen long, slow steps through the mud, he struck a patch of solid
ground and hauled himself up onto it; dirty seawater poured from his boots,
which had not been watertight in more than a sixnight. The marsh grass rustled
loudly as he pushed his way across the little hummock; he froze, peered back
over his shoulder, and, seeing nothing but the unbroken line of pine trees, sank
to the ground for a moment's rest.

The marsh was probably a mistake, he told himself as the foul smell saturated
his nostrils. He could not move through it without making noise, it seemedЧthe
rustling grass was far more audible than the crunch of pine needles, and the
suck of mud wasn't much betterЧand the enemy sorcerer almost certainly had some
sort of spell or talisman that augmented his hearing. Even the other two
northerners might have hearing more than normally acute; from what he had seen