"Charles L. Grant - Black Oak 03 - Winter Knight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

He also wished he had worn his cap. The snow had al-ready begun to catch and melt in his thick wavy hair, and by
the time he reached his hearth he'd no doubt be halfway home to a miserable cold. Still, there was no sense lamenting
what he didn't have, and making dire predic-tions of what might beтАФhe was here, so was the snow, and home wasn't
getting any closer.

At least it would be a pleasant walk.

The storm had begun not long before old Darve had ushered him away, and the flakes were still small, scarcely larger
than raindrops, glittering and flashing past the street-lamps, and they hadn't yet managed to cover the ground. Little
danger of slipping, less of being blinded, because there was no wind.

Just the snow, and his footsteps, echoing off the night.

Once clear of the waist-high stone wall that separated the pub's forecourt from pavement and tarmac, he glanced
south, down the length of the Row, and sighed in delight. A postcard picture it was, disguising the village's true age,
giving it all a badly needed fresh coat. A handful of blocks long, with no traffic or traffic lights, and one of the few red
phone boxes remaining in Britain, it was nineteenth cen-tury pure and simple.

Soon enough there would be car horns and kids with bizarre haircuts and the stench of exhaust and the blare of
those whatever-they-called-them-these-days portable tape players disturbing everyone's peace of mind.

For now, however, there was only the snow, and Battle Row, and the silence only snow could bring, deep and soft
and comfortably cold.

And safe.

It would be nice to stay here for a while and enjoy the view, but a chill turned him left, and with hands in pockets and
chin tucked into his scarf, he walked on.

Beyond the corner of the wall were a few yards of empty lot, dotted with saplings trying to stake a claim before
someone came along to build something on it. Another was across the street, a mirror image of the first, except there a
few of the ladies had planted a fenced-in garden, a village beautification project that Cheswick had to admit was fairly
successful.
 On this side the lot ended at a corner whose street formed a T-intersection with the Row; on the other it ended where
Battle Wood began.

Cheswick didn't much care for the Wood.

In daylight its trees seemed too widely spaced to be completely natural, its lowest boughs twice as high as the
village's tallest man, and so thickly intertwined that sun-light had a rough go of reaching the ground. Only a hand-ful
of bushes. Not much grass to speak of. The rest of the Wood's floor was either bare or covered with dead pine needles
and oak leaves. The ladies said that made good mulch, which they accordingly used in their garden; he only wished it
would make some noise when you walked on it.

In its own way, the Wood produced a snowlike silence, but all year round. Day or night.

This was the part of walking home he disliked.

It was foolish, of course. It wasn't as if there were gangs of hooligans and thugs lurking among the trees, waiting to