"Michael Jan Friedman - The Seekers and the Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman Michael Jan)

The wind that filled his nostrils was redolent with mem-
ories. It was the smell of freedom, of pride, of power. It
was the taste of his youth, spent among Asgard's towers
and in the shade of Asgard's woods.

He felt strangely at peace. Even though Odin stalked
belowтАФperhaps had already gathered hidden forces and
lay in wait for his enemies. Even though there was a rising
wave of discontent among his own armies now. Even
though the dissonance of war still rang in his ears, and
there would be more wars to come before he could lay
down his swordтАФeven with all this laid out before him like
a wild and unfinished tapestry, a feeling of calm still
washed over him when he looked down on Asgard,

Vidar felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Vidar?" It was Eric's voice, tentative.
"Aye," he said, and a moment passed in which there was
only silence. Then the one called Eric spoke again.

"Vidar, the Asgardians... they're saying that they
won't follow you...."

But Vidar was weary, so weary, and he did not hear the
rest. "Do you know," he asked, "how many hearthfires I've
gazed into and seen Asgard in the heat of the coals?" An
eagle glided up from its eyrie among the peaks and
wheeled on the upper airs. "As she was before the thursar

The Seekers and the Sword

tore down her towers and spilled blood in her streetsтАФand
took torches to the ruins."

For a moment, a scene rose unbidden behind his open
eyesтАФcharred spider-things that once were children, rub-
ble and dust and red flames that flickered like wolves'
tongues- A river dyed red, pools filled with blood, A ghost-
city, unpeopled and dead, empty but for the carrion birds
that sprouted on corpses like death's black blossoms. Then
he blinked it away, with some difficulty, and gazed again
on Asgard as she was.

Proud, sturdy towers reared up against the hard, crys-
talline heavens, connected one to the other by great, sky-
spanning bridges. The sun glinted on the green symmetry
of her gardens.