"Dave Duncan - A Man of His Word 3 - Perilous Seas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

violence there on occasion, yet he had never suffered loss of man or substance.
If pressed to explain his remarkable good fortune, he would merely smile
cryptically into his snowy beard and speak of vigilance and devotion to the
precepts of holy writ. This time, he was confident, his passage would be
similarly untroubled. This time his party was no larger nor richer than it had
been in the past.
Portly and dignified, Sheik Elkarath rode high on his camel, serenely surveying
the sun-blasted rocky landscape from under his snowbank brows as he led his long
train down to the Oasis of Tall Cranes. Here he was in the very center of the
Gauntlet, the most dangerous stretch of all. The barren crags around him
concealed a dozen dark ravines that only the locals knew, any one of which might
hold a band of armed brigands lying in wait. The jagged peaks of the Progistes
pressed close along the northwestern skyline.
The tiny settlement in the valley below comprised a few dozen adobe houses, a
welcome pond of clear water, and a hundred or so gangly palm trees. It owned no
mines and grew no crops of any substance. Yet the people of Tall Cranes were
well fed and prosperous. Their paddocks held many fine camels. Among other
peoples, all djinns had a reputation for perfidy, but within Zark itself, the
inhabitants of Tall Cranes were notorious.
From long experience, Sheik Elkarath anticipated a productive evening of
trading. Always he brought gold to Tall Cranes, because the elders would accept
nothing less for the jewels and crafts and livestock they offered. To inquire
into the source of their wealth would have been grossly discourteous and
insanely rash.
Behind the sheik, tall in the saddle, rode his chief guard. By the ancient
tradition of the camel roads, he was referred to always as First Lionslayer. In
his case the anonymity was especially valuable, because that spectacular young
man was Sultan Azak of Arakkaran, literally worth a king's ransom. Much farther
back in the caravan, the young woman professing to be his wife was Queen


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Inosolan of Krasnegar. She, however, would be worth nothing to the average
kidnapper, except brief carnal satisfaction. To the wardens, the four occult
guardians of the world, she was apparently worth considerably more.
But Sheik Elkarath would not be speaking of magic, or politics, during his visit
to the Oasis of Tall Cranes.

3
Ogi called out, "Shipmate ahoy!" as he drew near to the faun's cabin. The sun
had only just set and he was quite visible as he came through the low shrubs and
spindly trees, but life in a jotunn settlement like Durthing made caution second
nature to a man-startle a jotunn and he might kill first and apologize later.
Some would not apologize even then.
The hammering ceased, and a moment later Rap's face appeared in the window, a
homely face below a mop of brown hair like a tangle of dry ferns. He wiped his
forehead with a bare arm.
"Got some carp," Ogi yelled, holding them up. "And wine!"