"Eric Flint - The Philosophical Strangler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

encountered no one, which was fortunate, as Greyboar and I were rather stunned by the place. Not our
normal haunts, don't you know? Eventually, we arrived at an immense double door carved out of a
solid slab of some exotic hardwood. There was enough gilt on the handles alone to drown a whale.
"The door is locked," whispered Rashkuta, "with an intricate and powerful lock constructed by the
King's master locksmith, brought especially from the Sundjhab for the occasion."
"No problem," grunted Greyboar. He looked at me. "Are you ready, Ignace?" I shrugged.
"A moment, please!" hissed Rashkuta, and scurried down the corridor. Customers, like I said.
Greyboar seized the handles and tore the doors off their hinges. Entering, we beheld an
antechamber, empty except for four guards. These lads were bare from the waist up, clad in baggy blue
trousers tied up at their ankles. Curl-toed red slippers completed their uniforms. Funny-looking, sure,
but each one held a huge scimitar, and there was no denying they were splendid soldiers. Though
caught by surprise, they were on top of us in a heartbeat.
Upon Greyboar, to be precise, for I naturally took myself to one side. Not for me, this sort of melee.
The foremost soldier, muscles writhing like boas, swung a blow of his scimitar that would've felled
a cedar. But Greyboar seized his wrist in midstroke and tore the arm out of its socket and clubbed the
other three senseless and that was that.
"Aside from the professional fingerwork," Greyboar liked to say, "I think of my methods as a
classic application of Occam's Razor."
To the left stood an open door, leading to the guards' quarters. Beyond, a group of soldiers were
scrambling from a table where some exotic game was in progress. The most enterprising of the lot was
even now at the door, scimitar waving about.
"Bowls!" cried Greyboar, slamming the door in the soldier's face. You could hear them falling like
tenpins beyond. The door now closed, Greyboar sealed it by the simple expedient of wrenching the
frame out of shape. He had a way with doors, Greyboar did. On those occasions when we found
ourselves guests of the porkers in the Durance Pile, they kept us in a special dungeon equipped with
sliding stone slabs instead of the usual gate and grill. "At great expense to the State," Judge Rancor
Jeffreys sourly noted.
The preliminaries accomplished, Greyboar and I burst through the right-hand door. This new room
was obviously a sleeping chamber. But the bed and all other items of furniture had been shoved against
the walls, leaving the center of the room empty. Even the carpet that would normally have covered this
portion of the floor was rolled up and standing on end in a corner. The purpose of this unusual
arrangement was clear. For there, in the center of the room, squatting in a pentacle drawn on the bare
floor, was a man who could be none other than the sorcerer Dhaoji.
I won't attempt to describe him. Wizards are usually bizarre in their appearance, and this was a
wizard among wizards. Even at that very moment, the fellow was bringing some fearful-sounding
incantation to a close, which I had no doubt would have transmogrified us right proper. Mind you, I've
no use for their extravagant theories, mages, but there's no denying the better ones can wreak havoc on
a man's morphology.
"My job, this," said I. A moment later, two of my darts were sprouting from his neck. Dhaoji cried
out and clapped his neck. He broke off his incantation and tried to remove the darts. But the potion was
already at work.
Nor did Magrit fail us. A dire potion, indeed.
"Horrible!" gasped Greyboar. For even now was Dhaoji locked into his doom.
 "Yet 'tis clear as day," we heard him whimper, quivering, hunched like a hamster, eyes gazing into
The Terror, "that an arrow can only travel its course by traveling half the distance first. But then, to
cover the second half, it must cover half of that half first. And in order to cover half of that half, 'tis
necessary that it first cover half that distance again. How, then, can it ever complete its course? Yet it
does!" A hideous moan ensued.
Xenophobia hastening our steps, we entered the room beyond. At last, the royal chamber, no doubt
about it. Luxuries like sand on the beach. And our prey stood before us.