"Nancy Holder - Highlander - Measure of a Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Holder Nancy)

I see nothing of defeat in your face. You cannot know it yet, cannot
accept it. But I have you.

Hidari-do, blow to the left; migi-do, blow to the right. Ryote, ,sword
in both hands, karate, in one hand. You are skilled in Iaijutsu.
As soon as I answer your kata, you switch to another schoolIchiden-ryu.
Then to pure Highlander fury.

But you misstep.

You smack backward against a boulder and slide to the sand, the rough
rock ripping the skin off your back. Oblivious, you charge. Bloodlust
burns in your eyes. Your teeth gleam, bared, and there seems to be no
mind to you, no thought to you. You dervish like a machine, like the
energy of a hurricade.

For me: survival, survival.

For you: survival, tempered by the need to protect.

I know you. I know that in your soul you believe you will never die.
You think you are the one.

I thought the same about you. But today something told me to take you.
Today I knew I could beat you.

Only today.

And what mythic power compelled me, what force of nature or supernatural
being whispered in my heart, "Today, " I may never know. It is not
important.

All that matters is that it was telling me the truth.

And you die, Duncan MacLeod. You see the blade, you see the flash and
shine of it colliding with your future. You feel the first tissues of
your neck separate from your head.

You whisper a name I cannot hear. The name of a love, perhaps. Or a
teacher. Or the parents who cast you out.

And is there relief.? Is there the knowledge that, at last, the Game is
over and your burden is lifted?

Or is there only terror and despair?

I cannot say. Your dark eyes are hooded; I half suspect a trick. But
then your head comes off, so cleanly, so easily, and falls upon the
sand. I am almost sorry, but I have come so close to dying that I