"Eric Van Lustbader - Sunset Warrior 4 - Beneath an Opal Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lustbader Eric van)

scarred man is hollowcheeked. A long bent nose
leads inevitably to thick gnarled lips as if, in his
wild earlier years, he had fought with his fists
within the hempen circle, as is the wont of certain
of the folk of the western plains of the continent
of man. His hair is silver, silken, flowing long down
his back, held away from his wide wrinkled
forehead by a thin plaited band of copper. His
face, defiantly hairless, exhibits the tracery of livid
white scars puckering the flesh of his cheeks and
throat like rain on the surface of a pond. He wears
a long traveling cloak of a dark, indeterminate
color, owing to the grit of his journey. Beneath it,
a tunic and leggings of deepest brown. Hanging
from his waist from a simple stained leather belt is
a scabbarded curving sword, wide-bladed and
single-edged.

He pauses beside a wine stall on Thrice Blessed
Road and, dismounting, leads his mount out of the
enormous crush of the thoroughfare. As he strides
into the dimness beneath the pattemed awning, he
spies the wineseller, moon-faced and almond-eyed,
arguing with two young women over the price of a
leather flagon of wine. With a sweep of his
deep-set eyes, the scarred man takes in the curving
bodies of the women, their faces tipped high in
anger. But they are restless, his eyes, and while he
listens and waits somewhat impatiently, his gaze
darts this way and that, alighting on a face here,
the pale flash of a hand there. For a moment, he
observes a man with eyes like olives and black
curling hair so long that it covers his shoulders,
until he is met by another man and they depart.
The scarred man's head cocks at the thumping
sounds of running feet, shouts echo and diminish
as a body rushes past outside, elbowing through
the crowd. He turns away. He asks the wineseller,
now free, for a cup of spiced wine, downs it in one

4 Eric V. Lustbader

swallow. It is not the rice wine of the region,
which he finds too thin for his taste, but the
heartier burgundy of the northern regions. He
purchases a flagon.

The sunset is fading, the sky above Sha'angh'sei
turning mauve and violet as night approaches
boldly from the east.