"Terry McConnel - Highlander - Scimitar" - читать интересную книгу автора (McConnel Terry)

hundred years?

Joe blinked. For a moment the man sitting across the table from him was
something other, something more than just Duncan MacLeod, sometime owner
of a dojo and an antique store, world traveler, occasional raconteur,
good man, loyal friend, connoisseur of single-malt whiskies.

He was an Immortal. He had been born in the Highlands more than four
hundred years ago, and he could not die unless someone took his head,
and with it his power.

Joe Dawson knew all this intellectually-it was why he Watched, after
allut sometimes, as now, it hit him -in the gut that he would never
truly understand what it was like to carry centuries worth of memories,
to take another Immortal's head and with it the Quickening, to watch as
the world changed, as time passed and mortals died. Dawson might feel
old, watching MacLeod; but generations of men like Joe Dawson had passed
away while this scimitar and this man remained. It was no wonder the
glistening steel evoked such a bond in him.

"It's not a message, then?"

MacLeod shook his head. "If it is, I don't know what it might be." He
smiled suddenly. "It doesn't matter, though. Someone who knows me, and
knows-this." He touched the blade again, lightly.

Now Joe was even more curious. But it wasn't polite to grill his host,
and when MacLeod put the sword aside the conversation turned to ordinary
things, cu.-rent events, politics, sports, women, music, all the things
ordinary men, friends, might have talked about in a long June evening.
They might have been anywhere at all, much less in a martial-arts
studio.

it was late when the Watcher finally returned home. He put on an old
blues album and went to his journal, intending to update his records
with a short paragraph. Watching an Immortal often meant periods of
great boredom punctuated by short periods of dreadful activity. Once
the task was finished, he replaced the leather-bound book on the shelf
beside the rest. All the records were stored on disk as well; but Joe
found he preferred the sensory feel of the volumes themselves.

They were all alike, those books: they'd been rebound over the
centuries, sometimes copied and translated, the better to preserve their
contents. Most, though, were originals, passed down generations to rest
for the time being with him. The covers were marked with the same symbol
he had tattooed on his wrist, the trefoil-in-circles.

These two dozen volumes were the records of Watcher and Watched, over
centuries-not just the life of Duncan MacLeod, but of others Joe Dawson
had Watched play and lose the Game, and their heads. He'd been quite