"Ashley McConnel - Highlander Scimitar" - читать интересную книгу автора (McConnell Ashley)

Any historical or linguistic errors are, of course, entirely my own
responsibility.

Prologue: The Watcher

A Watcher was supposed to Watch: observe, record, report. That meant
putting forth some effort from time to time, Joe Dawson acknowledged.
He'd gotten lazy, though, since the subject of the Watching knew about
it. Sometimes he even talked to Joe about his life. It had made Joe's
job much simpler.
But as usual, when a job got too simple, details got easier to overlook.
He was reminded he'd been neglecting his duties when the package arrived
at the bar, and he couldn't recall the last time he'd had a conversation
with its intended recipient.

Someone had left it sitting there, one afternoon in early June, before
the evening crowd began wandering in. He couldn't figure out how the
thing got there; one minute the bar was empty, the next the box was
lying on the corner of the stage, next to a guitar case. The package
wasn't small, either: a good four feet long, a foot wide, some six
inches deep, wrapped up in brown paper and tied with twine, a
cream-colored business card tucked under the knot. A name was written
on the card in flowing brown ink. Joe hefted the parcel: not too heavy.
Nothing ticked ominously.

The bartender was new, still learning where the good stuff was kept, and
he swore there hadn't been anyone there. Joe merely cocked an ironic
eye at him, snorted, and decided it was time to go visiting.

Watching.

Keeping track.

Leaning on his cane in the doorway of the dojo, he watched Duncan
MacLeod move through the elegant, deadly forms of a kata, sweat
glistening on his upper body. Light gleamed on the blade of the sword
shrieking through the air, left shimmering afterimages that hurt the
eyes. MacLeod's face was very still, his attention focused inward. His
movement was a cross between dance and death.

He looked like a man who had spent most of a lifetime in such exercise.
He was tall, appeared to be in his midthirties; sleek-muscled, with long
dark hair tied back in a ponytail that whipped the air as he spun and
leaped, shadowfighting. The elegant grace of it gave the Watcher an
unaccustomed pang of envy, a feeling of weariness in his bones, a sense
that he was-getting old.

That was ironic, too. Joe brushed at his graying beard and smiled to
himself. Anyone looking at the two of them together might be forgiven
for thinking him perhaps twenty years older than the man who fought with