"David Gemmell - Sipstrassi Tales 04 - The Last Guardian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gemmel David)

THE LAST GUARDIAN
This novel is dedicated with love to my children Kathryn and Luke who, thankfully, are still too
young to know what fine people they are.

FOREWORD
There was no doubt in my mind about what happened to Jon Shannow when he rode into the
mountains, wounded and alone. He was dying. And Jerusalem beckoned.
Yet once the novel was published reader reaction was immediate. How long to the next Shannow
story? In those days reader's letters did not arrive in bulging post bags and I was able to answer
all of them. The answer was simple: Thank you for your letter, and I am glad you enjoyed Jon
Shannow's tale, but he is dead. There will be no more adventures.
I sent just such a response to a fan in Liverpool. He knew better and wrote back immediately. 'No
he's not! No way!'
It was a real shock - as if he knew something I didn't. I showed the letter to one of my test
readers. Her amused response was 'Hey, maybe he's right. You don't know everything, Dave.
You're only the author.'
From that moment I started wondering about Shannow. Could there have been some miracle on
the mountain?
At around the same time I received a number of reviews for Wolf In Shadow. Some were very
good, some were indifferent, but one was downright vile. One of the lines in it struck me
particularly. I dread to think of people who look up to men like Jon Shannow. The writer was
named Broome.
Twenty years of journalism had taught me not to over-react to criticism. A writer's work is not his
child. It is just work. A work of love and passion, but a work nonetheless. Even so I wanted to
react in some way. All the characters in my novels are based on real people, and I thought it
would be a neat response to use a character named Broome, a man passionately opposed to
violence who would loathe the hero, but be drawn into his world. It was in my mind that he
would be a cannon fodder character, of little conscquence, who would die early. But, as with so
much in the magical world of creative writing, events did not - as you will see - turn out anything
like I had planned.
It took only one more little nudge to push me into a second Shannow novel. I was driving home
one night, listening to the radio, when the haunting lyric of a new song struck home like an
arrow.
The singer was a brilliant new American artiste named Tracy Chapman, and the song spoke of
racism and riots, and the appalling violence that has sadly become commonplace in the
impoverished inner cities of America. One line had immense power for me...
Across the lines who would dare to go...
I knew who would dare.
I got home around 2 am and immediately switched on the word processor. I had no idea how to
get round the obvious death of my hero in the first book, and did not wish to write a prequel. In
the end I used the simplest device there is. I began with the words:
But he did not die.
David A. Gemmell
Hastings, 1995
3301
 SOUTH OF THE PLAGUE LANDS - 2341 AD
But he did not die. The flesh around the bullet wound over his hip froze as the temperature
dropped to thirty below zero, and the distant spires of Jerusalem blurred and changed, becoming
snow-shrouded pine. Ice had formed on his beard and his heavy black, double-shouldered topcoat
glistened white in the moonlight. Shannow swayed in the saddle, trying to focus on the city he