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

"Up-corners you can drop things around."

"Yes, indeed you can!" he agreed and in a sudden frenzy of exercise
that left him breathing hard sent the rest of the arrows winging successively
after the first. All of them seemed to land close behind the standing stone --
all except the last, which they heard clash faintly against rock -- but when
they'd walked up to where they could see, they found that all but the last
arrow had missed. The feathered shafts stood upright, their points plunged
into the soft earth, in an oddly regular little row that didn't quite reach
the target-bag -- all but the last, which had gone through an edge of the bag
at an angle and hung there, tangled by its three goosefeather vanes.

"See, you missed," Gale said, "all but the one that glanced off the
rock."

"Yes. Well, that's enough shooting for me," he decided, and while she
pulled up the arrows and carefully teased loose the last, he loosened the
bow's tang from its wood socket, using the back of his knife blade as a pry,
then unstrung the bow and hung it across his back by its loose string around
his chest, then fitted a wrought-iron hook into the wrist-socket, wedging it
tight by driving the head of the hook against the stone. He winced as he did
that last, for his stump was still tender and the dozen last shots he'd made
had tried it.

*.3.*

As they walked toward the low, mostly red-roofed homes of Salthaven,
the setting sun on their backs, Fafhrd studied the gray standing stones and
asked Gale, "What do you know about the old gods Rime Isle had? -- before the
Rime men got atheism."
 "They were a pretty wild, lawless lot, Aunt Afreyt says -- sort of like
Captain Mouser's men before they became soldiers, or your berserks before you
tamed them down." She went on with growing enthusiasm, "They certainly didn't
believe in any Golden Arrow of Truth, or Golden Ruler of Prudence, or Little
Gold Cup of Measured Hospitality -- mighty liars, whores, murderers, and
pirates, I guess, all of them."

Fafhrd nodded. "Maybe Cif's ghost was one of them," he said. A tall,
slender woman came toward them from a violet-toned house. When Afreyt neared
them she called to Gale, "So that's where you were. Your mother was
wondering." She looked at Fafhrd. "How did the archery go?"

"Captain Fafhrd hit the target almost every time," Gale answered for
him. "He even hit it shooting around corners! And I didn't help him a bit
fitting his bow or anything."

Afreyt nodded.

Fafhrd shrugged.