"Fritz Leiber - FGM 2 - Swords Against Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

above the storm toward the doorway, his voice sounding tiny to himself in his
thunder-smitten ears, "Hear me, witch, wizard, nightgaunt, whatever you are! I
shall never in my life enter again the foul city which has stolen from me my
dearest and only love, the incomparable and irreplaceable Vlana, for whom I
shall forever grieve and for whose unspeakable death I shall forever feel
guilt. The Thieves' Guild slew her for her freelance thieving -- and we slew
the slayers, though it profited us nothing at all."
"Likewise I shall never lift foot toward Lankhmar again," the Gray
Mouser took up from beside him in a voice like an angry trumpet, "the loathy
metropolis which horribly bereft me of my beloved Ivrian, even as Fafhrd was
bereft and for similar reason, and left me loaded with an equal weight of
sorrow and shame, which I shall bear forever, even past my perishing." A salt
spider big as a platter sailed close by his ear in the grip of the gale,
kicking its thick, corpse-white legs, and veered off past the hut, but the
Mouser did not start in the least and there was no break whatever in his words
as he continued, "Know, being of blackness, haunter of the dark, that we slew
the foul wizard who murdered our loves and killed his two rodentine familiars
and mauled and terrorized his employers at Thieves' House. But revenge is
empty. It cannot bring back the dead. It cannot assuage by one atom the grief
and guilt we shall feel forever for our darlings."
"Indeed it cannot," Fafhrd seconded loudly, "for we were drunk when our
darlings died, and for that there is no forgiveness. We highjacked a small
treasure in gems from thieves of the Guild, but we lost the two jewels beyond
price and without compare. And we shall never return to Lankhmar!"
Lightning shone from beyond the hut and thunder crackled. The storm was
moving inland, south from the road.
The hood that held darkness drew back a little and slowly shook from
side to side, once, twice, thrice. The harsh voice intoned, fainter because
Fafhrd's and the Mouser's ears were still somewhat deafened and a-ring from
that father of thunderstrokes:
_Never and forever are neither for men. _
_You'll be returning again and again._
Then the hut was moving inland too on its five spindly legs. It turned
around, so that its door faced away from them, and its speed increased, its
legs moving nimbly as those of a cockroach, and was soon lost amongst the
tangle of thorn and seahawk trees.
So ended the first encounter of the Mouser and his comrade Fafhrd with
Sheelba of the Eyeless Face.
Later that day the two swordsmen waylaid an insufficiently guarded
merchant Lankhmar-bound, depriving him of the best two of his four cart-horses
-- for thieving was first nature to them -- and on these clumping mounts made
their way out of the Great Salt Marsh and across the Sinking Land to the
sinister hub-city of Ilthmar with its treacherous little inns and innumerable
statues and bas-reliefs and other depictions of its rat-god. There they
changed their clumsy horses for camels and were soon humping south across the
desert, following the eastern shore of the turquoise Sea of the East. They
crossed the River Tilth in dry season and continued on through the sands,
bound for the Eastern Lands, where neither of them had previously traveled.
They were searching for distraction in strangeness and intended first to visit
Horborixen, citadel of the King of Kings and city second only to Lankhmar in