"David Eddings - Ellenium 1 - The Diamond Throne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

traveller was a big man, a bigness of large, heavy bone and ropy tendon
rather than of flesh. His hair was coarse and black, and at some time his
nose had been broken. He rode easily, but with the peculiar alertness of
the trained warrior. His name was Sparhawk, a man at least ten years older
than he looked, who carried the erosion of his years not so much on his
battered face as in a half-dozen or so minor infirmities and discomforts
and in the several wide purple scars upon his body which always ached in
damp weather. Tonight, however, he felt his age, and he wished only for a
warm bed in the obscure inn which was his goal. Sparhawk was coming home at
last after a decade of being someone else with a different name in a
country where it almost never rained, where the sun was a hammer pounding


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down on a bleached white anvil of sand and rock and hard-baked clay, where
the walls of the buildings were thick and white to ward off the blows of
the sun, and where graceful women went to the wells in the silvery light of
early morning with large clay vessels balanced on their shoulders and
black veils across their faces. The big roan horse shuddered absently,
shaking the rain out of his shaggy coat, and approached the city gate,
stopping in the ruddy circle of torchlight before the gatehouse.

An unshaven gate guard in a rust-splotched breastplate and helmet, and with
a patched green cloak negligently hanging from one shoulder, came
unsteadily out of the gatehouse and stood swaying in Sparhawk's path.
'I'll need your name,' he said in a voice thick with
drink.
Sparhawk gave him a long stare, then opened his cloak
to show the heavy silver amulet hanging on a chain about
his neck.
The half-drunk gate guard's eyes widened slightly,
and he stepped back a pace. 'Oh,' he said, "sorry, my
Lord. Go ahead.'
Another guard poked his head out of the gatehouse.
'Who is it,, Raf?' he demanded.
'A Pandion Knight,' the first guard replied nervously.
'What's his business in Cimmura?'
'I don't question the Pandions, Bral,' the man named
Raf answered. He smiled ingratiatingly up at Sparhawk.
'New man,' he said apologetically, jerking his thumb
back over his shoulder at his comrade. 'He'll learn in
time, my Lord. Can we serve you in any way?'
'No,' Sparhawk replied, 'thanks all the same. You'd
better get in out of the rain, neighbour. You'll catch cold out
here.' He handed a small coin to the green cloaked guard
and rode on into the city, Passing up the narrow, cobbled
street beyond the gate with the slow clatter of the big roan's
steel-shod hooves echoing back from the buildings.