"Simon Hawke - Wizard 7 - The Wizard of Camelot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

I could easily have done without.

There was once another Malory, Sir Thomas Malory, who wrote Le Morte
d'Arthur.
However, he was no relation and, in those days, I was unaware of the fateful
irony involved in my bearing the same name as his. I was unaware of a great
many
things back in those days, those dark, terrible days. I was unaware of the
influence fate wields in people's lives. I never really thought about such
things back then. There were more immediate, far more pressing matters to
occupy
all my attention, matters pertaining to survival.

In the army, I had served with the L.U.A.D., which stood for London Urban
Assault Division. It was a rather dramatic name, but quite appropriate, all
things considered. I saw a great deal of action in my time with the Loo, as
we
called it, during the International Pacification Campaigns. The word "loo" is
British slang for toilet or, as the Americans might say, the "crapper." And
that, too, was appropriate, in its own way.

I'd put in over twenty years with the service and I was approaching my
fortieth
birthday. I had a wife, Jenny, and two small children; Christine, aged
eleven,
and Michelle, aged nine, and I wanted nothing quite so much as to find a safe
and reasonably peaceful haven for them. In those dark days of the Collapse,
"reasonably peaceful" was about as much as anyone could hope for. And, for
many
people, it was a hope never to be realized.

London was a war zone that erupted into full-scale mass street riots on the
average of several times a year The army was frequently called in to quell
them.
These domestic police actions, taking place in various large British cities,
became known as the Internal Pacification Campaigns. They occurred with such
frequency that the major ones were simply referred to by number, in a rather
Yank-like military shorthand, such as In-Pac 9, which erupted in London,
In-Pac
10, which broke out in Coventry, and so forth. The minor campaigns occurred
so
often that no one even bothered counting them.

I had seen a good number of my mates go down in those campaigns and I'd had
about enough.

I wanted out.

I moved my family to Loughborough, in the Midlands, approximately one hundred
miles north of London, near Nottingham. It was not exactly a small town, but