"01 - A Difficulty With Dwarves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Craig Shaw)

'Hey!' a small voice piped from near my foot. 'Are these fellows bothering you?'

'Eh?' Grott said. 'What's this?' Obviously, in their haste to threaten me again, my three fellow apprentices had completely missed my tiny companion. Grott glared down at the Brownie. 'Oh, an insect of some kind.'

'Only if insects are equipped with Brownie Power!' Tap exclaimed.

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Grott laughed at that. 'No matter what defenses an insect has, it can easily be squashed.'

'Yeah.' Slag chuckled as he raised his foot. 'Squashed!'

The Brownie danced, a frown of concentration on his tiny face. The laces on Slag's rapidly descending shoe suddenly snaked out and tied themselves around the man's arms, causing the large apprentice to totally lose his balance. Slag fell beyond the Brownie with a considerable crash.

'What happened?' Grott demanded.

'Yeah.' Slag struggled to put words in a sentence. 'What . . . uh, shoe . . . uh, tie. No. Untie!' The large fellow pointed gleefully to his unlaced boot, happy that he had found the right word.

'What?' Grott repeated incredulously. 'Oh, never mind. We'll figure it out later, after Vermin takes a little prize from our apprentice friend here. Something to remember you by, Wuntvor, a little keepsake - say, a piece of your ear.'

Vermin's knife pressed even harder against my throat.

'Don't worry,' Grott added. 'We'll give it back to you when you deliver the four hundred pieces of gold.' He cleared his throat and smiled. 'Did I say four? So sorry. A slip of the tongue. I meant, of course, five hundred pieces. Vermin, if you would?'

'Not while there's Brownie Power around!' Tap cried triumphantly.

'What?' Grott's voice held a note of panic. 'What's happening to my shoes?'

'Yeah!' Slag replied hoarsely. 'Untie!'

And that was what Grott's soft leather boots were doing: the laces seemingly untying of their own accord. The knife was no longer at my throat, so I was free to turn my head

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and see the same thing happening to the footwear of both Vermin and Slag. Six sets of laces untied, then stretched to perhaps three times their natural length, swatting away the apprentices' hands when the guild members tried to control them. Then just as rapidly the individual laces found each other and tied new knots, so that Grott, Slag, and Vermin were joined together by their footwear.

'I'm warning you!' Grott screamed as his feet were pulled from under him. 'A cure for our masters or six hundred pieces of gold!'

The six shoes, with the apprentices' feet still inside, began to bounce up and down.

'Did I say six hundred? I meant seven hundred!'

The bouncing grew more pronounced.

'Eight hundred!' Grott, Slag, and Vermin caught each other's arms to keep from falling. The shoes bounced away from me and the Brownie. 'No! A thousand!' Their bouncing took on height and speed as the three took great six-foot leaps across the courtyard. 'And by moonrise tomorrow, or you'll be really sorry!'

Their leaps grew higher still, so that by the time they reached the far end of the courtyard, their final jump sent them clear over the Great Hall.

'A thousand?' Grott shrieked with all his might. 'That is not enough! Twelve hun -'