"Thieves World v2 7 - 1988 - Dagger - D Drake" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

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To

Bob Asprin,

who in October 1979 asked, "Have you read Thieves' World yet?"

CHAPTER 1

"You NEED A dagger, caravan master," said the stranger to Samlor hil Samt as he
began to bring a weapon slowly out from under his cloak.

The man hadn't spoken loudly, but there were key words which rang in the air of
the Vulgar Unicorn. Weapon words were almost as sure a way to get attention in
this bar as the mention of money. Conversation stopped or dropped into a lower
key; eyes shifted over beer mugs and dice cups.

Samlor was already in the state of tension which gripped any sane man when he
walked into this bar in the heart of Sanctuary's Maze district. More than the
word "dagger" shocked him now, so that his right hand slipped to the brass
pommel and hiltЧof nondescript hardwood, plain and serviceable like the man who
carried itЧof the long fighting knife in his belt sheath.

At the same time, Samlor's left arm swept behind him to locate and hold his
seven-year-old niece Star. She was with him in this place because there was no
place safer for her than beside her mother's brother . . . which was almost
another way of saying that there is no safety at all in this life.

Almost: because for forty-three years, Samlor hil Samt had managed to do what he
thought he had to do, be damned to the price he paid or the cost to whatever
stood between him and duty.

1

2 David Drake

The stranger shouldn't have called him "caravan master. " That's what he was,
what he had been ever since he had determined to lift his family from poverty,
despite the scorn all his kin heaped on him for dishonoring Cirdonian nobility
by going into trade. But no one in Sanctuary should have recognized Samlor; and