"Fritz Leiber - FGM 3 - Swords in the Mist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

Gis the cutthroat and the courtesan Tres had watched the fog coming
across the fantastically peaked roofs of Lankhmar until it obscured the low-
swinging yellow crescent of the moon and the rainbow glow from the palace.
Then they had lit the cressets and drawn the blue drapes and were playing at
throw-knife to sharpen their appetites for a more intimate but hardly kinder
game.
Tres was not unskillful, but Gis could somersault the weapon a dozen or
thirteen times before it stuck in wood and throw as truly between his legs as
back over his shoulder without mirror. Whenever he threw the knife so it
struck very near Tres, he smiled. She had to remind herself that he was not
much more evil than most evil men.
A frond of fog came wreathing between the blue drapes and touched Gis
on the temple as he prepared to throw. "The blood in the fog's in your eye-
whites!" Tres cried, staring at him weirdly. He seized the girl by the ear
and, smiling hugely, slashed her neck just below her dainty jaw. Then, dancing
out of the way of the gushing blood, he delicately snatched up his belt of
daggers and darted down the curving stairs to the street, where he plunged
into a warmhearted fog that was somehow as full of rage as the strong wine of
Tovilyis is of sugar, a veritable cistern of wrath. His whole being was bathed
in sensations as ecstatic as those strong but fleeting ones the tendril's
touch on his temple had loosed from his brain. Visions of daggered princesses
and skewered serving maids danced in his head. He stepped along happily, agog
with delicious anticipations, beside Gnarlag of the Two Swords, knowing him at
once for a hate-brother, sacrosanct, another slave of the blessed fog.
****
Fafhrd cupped his big hands over the brazier and whistled the gay tune
sifting from the remotely twinkling palace. The Mouser, now re-oiling the
blade of Scalpel against the mist, observed, "For one beset by taints and
danger-hums, you're very jolly."
"I like it here," the Northerner asserted. "A fig for courts and beds
and inside fires! The edge of life is keener in the street -- as on the
mountaintop. Is not imagined wine sweeter than wine?" ("Ho!" the Mouser
laughed, most sardonically.) "And is not a crust of bread tastier to one an-
hungered than larks' tongues to an epicure? Adversity makes the keenest
appetite, the clearest vision."
"There spoke the ape who could not reach the apple," the Mouser told
him. "If a door to paradise opened in that wall there, you'd dive through."
"Only because I've never been to paradise," Fafhrd swept on. "Is it not
sweeter now to hear the music of Innesgay's betrothal from afar than mingle
with the feasters, jig with them, be cramped and blinkered by their social
rituals?"
"There's many a one in Lankhmar gnawn fleshless with envy by those
sounds tonight," the Mouser said darkly. "I am not gnawn so much as those
stupid ones. I am more intelligently jealous. Still, the answer to your
question: no!"
"Sweeter by far tonight to be Glipkerio's watchman than his pampered
guest," Fafhrd insisted, caught up by his own poetry and hardly hearing the
Mouser.
"You mean we serve Glipkerio _free?_" the latter demanded loudly. "Aye,
there's the bitter core of all freedom: no pay!"