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

shatra, or at least not the sort he was familiar with; they customarily wore
round, close-fitting helmets that covered almost the entire head. Enemy
sorcerers usually wore similar black helmets festooned with talismans, and the
common soldiers made do with whatever they could scrounge upЧmost often ancient,
rusty relics passed down through generations of warfare. This gray object did
not look like any of those. It didn't look like a helmet at all; it looked like
a cloth hat.

He wondered whether it might be some unfamiliar variety of beast, perhaps a
magically created one or some odd kind of small dragon. He had seen pointed
hats; they had once, he understood, been the standard issue for wizards until
someone pointed out that they made excellent targets, but he could not imagine
what one would be doing here, far to the north and west of anything resembling
civilization. Who would be wearing such a thing in a marsh on the edge of
nowhere?

He sank back to the ground and pulled his left sock back up, ignoring the fact
that it was still soaking wet, and then pulled on his other sock and both boots.

The rustling noise continued; whatever the tall thing with the gray point was,
it didn't seem to have noticed him. He stood up again, then crouched and began
inching his way toward whatever it was, parting the grass carefully with his
hands.

As careful as he was, however, his movement was not silent. He stopped again and
listened.

The other had also stopped. For a tense moment, Valder waited. Then the rustling
began again, and the other moved away. Valder followed, trying to move only when
the other moved, but the rustling of his own passage drowned out the other's
noise and made it very difficult to judge when the other had stopped.

A few feet from the spot where he had sat and dumped out his boots Valder found
himself at the northern edge of the dry hummock, facing a wide, shallow channel.
He eased his foot into it until the sole of his boot was resting on solid
bottom, sunk an inch or two into muck. His other foot followed, until he was
standing in six inches of foul-smelling water and three inches of goo. Both feet
were once again thoroughly soaked.

He waded across the channel, moving slowly so as not to splash. No grass grew in
the center of the channel, and the reeds were not thick, so that he was able to
proceed without making very much noise. He heard new sounds ahead, not
rustlings, but clatterings, as if things were being casually moved about.

He reached the far side of the channel and slogged up the bank, pushing aside
reeds and grass; he paused at the top to peer ahead.

The gray point was not in sight, but something else was, something yellow-brown,
warm and inviting in the setting sun. It looked very much like a thatched roof.
From his previous viewpoint it had blended with the surrounding foliage.