"Fritz Leiber - FGM 7 - The Knight and Knave of Swords" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

jogging and jostling each other. Their flaring glows rebounded through the
murk from a lacy yet massy small gold globe showing between his thin clawed
silver fingers -- its twelve thick edges like those of a hexahedron embedded
in the surface of a sphere and curving conformably to that structure. He
proffered it to her. The golden light gave the semblance of life to their
hawklike features.

"Sister," he breathed, "it is now your task, and geas laid upon you, to
proceed to Rime Isle and regain our treasure, taking vengeance or not as
opportunity affords and prudence counsels -- whilst I maintain here, unifying
the forces and regathering the scattered allies against your return. You will
need this last cryptic treasure for your protection and as a hound to scent
out its brothers in the world above."

Now for the first time Ississi seemed to hesitate and her eagerness to
abate.

"The way is long, brother, and we are weak with waiting," she
protested, wailing. "What was once a week's fast sailing will be for me three
black moons of torturesome dark treading, press I on ever so hard. We have
become the sea's slaves, brother, and carry always the sea's weight. And I
have grown to abhor the daylight."

"We have also the sea's strength," he reminded her commandingly, "and
though we are weak as ghosts on land, preferring darkness and the deep, we
also know the old ways of gaining power and facing even the sun. It is your
task, sister. The geas is upon you. Salt is heavy but blood is sweet. Go, go,
go!"

Wherewith she snatched the goldy ghost-globe from his grip, plunged it
into her pouch, and turning with a sudden flirt made off, the living lamps
scattering to make a dark northward route for her.

With the last "Go," a small bubble formed at the corner of Mordroog's
thin, snarling, silvery lips, detached itself from them, and slowly grew in
size as it mounted from these dark deeps up toward the water's distant
surface.

*.2.*

Three months after the events aforenarrated, Fafhrd was at archery
practice on the heath north of Salthaven City on Rime Isle's southeastern
coast -- one more self-imposed, self-devised, and self-taught lesson of many
in learning the mechanics of life for one lacking a left hand, lost to Odin
during the repulse of the Widder Sea-Mingols from the Isle's western shores.
He had firmly affixed a tapering, thin, finger-long iron rod (much like a
sword blade's tang) to the midst of his bow and wedged it into the
corresponding deep hole in the wooden wrist heading the closefitting leather
stall, half the length of his forearm and dotted with holes for ventilation,
that covered his newly healed stump -- with the result that his left arm