"MacLeod, Ian R - Sealight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

It would all have been over quickly enough had the creature not been indolent
and ancient, used to eating nothing larger than the frogs and snakes and gray
things of the marshes. Somehow it couldn't swallow Ran past his hips. He was
stuck -- the mouth would widen no further. The throat pulsed uselessly, grinding
Ran's legs. The creature began to thrash wildly, turning pinkish in anger, then
red as it began to choke. The yellow eye watered and blinked. The creature grew
desperate. One of the tentacles pulled hard at Ran's right arm. For a moment, he
felt as though it might bust from its socket, but the creature's strength was
failing. It was choking, dying.

The tentacles fell uselessly into the water. Silt swirled, began to settle. Ran
heaved against the collar of flesh that held him. He pushed again, images of a
slow death inside the maw of this dead creature playing through his mind. Given
the choice, he would rather the thing had consumed him -- but then he felt
something give. Lubricated by stinking saliva, he hauled himself out.

He picked his way across the bobbing island of flesh, trying to ignore the white
parasites that scuttled around his feet. Before he jumped back into the boat, he
noticed something glimmering at the comer of his sight. Filled with a weird
sense of curiosity, he decided to look.

He expected no more than light on water or a dead fish, but what he found was an
oddly shaped knife wedged into the wrinkled flesh where two tentacles joined.
The handle terminated in two golden loops. He took it and pulled. The blade
winked in his face, seeming to focus what little light penetrated the marsh. He
smiled and stuffed it into the belt beneath his sodden jerkin, wondering whether
it might finally signify a change in his luck.

IT WAS GROWING dark when Ran's boat drew back into sight of the city. He drifted
on the stale evening breeze through the treacherous channels, past salt pans and
weed-strung bones of ancient wrecks toward the fishermen's harbor. His body
responded to the boat's needs as he stared east. Torea was black with night, but
he was sure he could see a filigree of light from one window. Breathing the
gathering aroma of the city, he thought of Jolenta, the white purity of her
flesh. Clean and cool, like sheets of new linen . . .

Most of the other fishermen were already back at their moorings. They all wanted
to know about Ran's plans for the evening, which inn they would be starting the
traditional pre-wedding carouse in. Ran plucked a name at random -- the
Captain's Lash; a suitably lowlife dive. He told them he'd be there at seven
bells, and wondered how long they would sit there waiting for him with tumblers
of spiked ale before they realized he wasn't going to show.

He made his way home across bobbing walkways, over creaking bridges, through the
courtyard and up the final stairway where the same babies were crying, the same
arguments rumbling. His mother was sitting up in bed in the smoggily lit parlor;
Piir generally came around about midday to see to her. Ran noticed that the
flask of cheap nullwine that she used to relieve her pain was almost empty. She
must have had a bad day--it was always worse when the weather was close and hot.