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

There was the inescapable thought that as soon as that eye could see,
some ten beweaponed tentacles would thrust or slash at once, unerringly.
Fafhrd stood terror-bemused between the swiftly-forming eye and the
Mouser. The latter, suddenly inspired, gripped Scalpel firmly, readied himself
for a dash, and cried to the tall northerner, "Make a stirrup!"
Guessing the Mouser's stratagem, Fafhrd shook his horrors and laced his
fingers together and went into a half crouch. The Mouser raced forward and
planted his right foot in the stirrup Fafhrd had made of his hands and kicked
off from it just as the latter helped his jump with a great heave -- and a
simultaneous "Ow!" of extreme pain.
The Mouser, preceded by his exactly aimed sword, went straight through
the reddish ectoplasmic eye disk, dispersing it entirely. Then he vanished
from Fafhrd's view as suddenly and completely as if he had been swallowed up
by a snowbank.
An instant later the armed tentacles began to thrust and slash about,
at random and erratically, as blind swordsmen might. But since there were a
full ten of them, some of the strokes came perilously close to Fafhrd and he
had to dodge and duck to keep out of the way. At the rutch of his shoes on the
cobbles the tentacle-wielded swords and knives began to aim themselves a
little better, again as blind swordsmen might, and he had to dodge more nimbly
-- not the easiest or safest work for a man so big. A dispassionate observer,
if such had been conceivable and available, might have decided the ghost squid
was trying to make Fafhrd dance.
Meanwhile on the other side of the white monster, the Mouser had caught
sight of the pinkishly silver thread and, leaping high as it lifted to evade
him, slashed it with the tip of Scalpel. It offered more resistance to his
sword than the whole fog-body had and parted with a most unnatural and
unexpected twang as he cut it through.
Immediately the fog-body collapsed and far more swiftly than any
punctured bladder -- rather it fell apart like a giant white puffball kicked
by a giant boot -- and the tentacles fell to pieces, too, and the swords and
knives came clattering down harmlessly on the cobbles, and there was a swift
fleeting rush of stench that made both Fafhrd and the Mouser clap hand to nose
and mouth.
After sniffing cautiously and finding the air breathable again, the
Mouser called brightly, "Hola there, dear comrade! I think I cut the thing's
thin throat, or heart string, or vital nerve, or silver tether, or birth cord,
or whatever the strand was."
"Where did the strand lead back to?" Fafhrd demanded.
"I have no intention of trying to find that out," the Mouser assured
him, gazing warily over his shoulder in the direction from which the fog had
come. "You try threading the Lankhmar labyrinth if you want to. But the strand
seems as gone as the thing."
"Ow!" Fafhrd cried out suddenly and began to flap his hands. "Oh you
small villain, to trick me into making a stirrup of my burnt hands!"
The Mouser grinned as he poked about with his gaze at the nastily
slimed cobbles and the dead bodies and the scattered hardware. "Cat's Claw
must be here somewhere," he muttered, "and I did hear the chink of gold...."
"You'd feel a penny under the tongue of a man you were strangling!"
Fafhrd told him angrily.