"Andrew J. Offutt - Cormac 06 - The Undying Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

The most powerful and dedicatedly evil sorcerer in the worldтАЩs history was loose again on the face of the
earth.


Chapter One:
Eight-and-twenty Picts
Sped by strong hands at its ten banks of oars, the hide-covered shipтАФor long boatтАФclove the water as
though with good wind behind. Yet its blue sail was furled, for no air stirred the sea that basked so lazily in
the sun betwixt Britain and Eirrin. Only where the ship passed was the blue-green water disturbed; it foamed
cloud-white along the little ship and for a short distance in its wake.
The men at the oars had set aside their helmets, some of which sprouted horns, while one was decorated
with feathers and still another trailed a horsehair plume after the Roman fashion. Long was the hair of these
men, plaited or caught back by a thong, and there was but one among the crew of that lone vessel whose
locks were more dark than the colour of new copper. Some of the oarsmen were daubed on face and arms
with blue paint or dye. Others wore no such paint, though the face of one huge-armed fellow was etched with
a scar so fierce it might have been mistaken for a red dye, only slightly faded.
Three men were aboard who rowed not.
One stood well forward; another manned the tiller. Wargirt they both were, and brawny.
He at the prow wore no helm, but he had chosen to crown his dark yellow hair with a cap made of catskins.
From that barred cap sprouted a little plume of seven eagle feathers. Bronze were the bracers on his arms,
one blade-etched from some past time when it had saved his shield-hand. His tunic was blue; over it he wore
an excellent leathern jerkin that covered him from collarbones to his thighs just below his genitals. The
cordwain belt slung at his hips supported a dagger on either side. He wore no sword. This manтАЩs weapon,
with a broad thong forming a loop where it had been stoutly wet-tied in a groove ringing the haft, was an ax.
Its head was invisible, covered with an oiled cowhide bag against the salt spray.
The ax-manтАЩs feet and ankles were laced into what were unmistakably caligulae, the short boots of the
Roman legionaries who had for so long ruled his land... and protected it from those many who now came from
oversea to carve it up among themselves; Saxons and Angles, Jutes and Frisians, Irish and Danes; aye, and
from the north over the old wall, Picts and the Scoti of Alba that the Romans had called Caledonia.
The blond ax-man at the prow looked asea.
The man at the stern wore a sword, long at his left hip and down his leg. Though he stood the deck of a
hide-covered longboat and with his light auburn hair plaited behind each ear to fall down his back, the sword
had surely belonged to a darker man more at home astride a horse; it was a spatha, a Roman cavalrymanтАЩs
sword. No adornment relieved his helmet, which was composed of four bands of dull grey metal laid onto a
soft leathern caul. He too wore a jerkin of boiled leather, over a tunic of grey wool. The score or more steel
rings fixed to the front of that plain lorica were as much reinforcing protection as decoration. This manтАЩs full
drooping mustachioes contained more bronze-red than his braids.
Oars creaked and thumped. Men grunted; water gurgled and swished, and the twenty-oared boat seemed to
scud on the very surface of the sea as it swept forward, with unusual smoothness. Its heading was
southerly.
The man at the bow was gazing southwestward, ahead and to starboard. Gazing that way as well were the
auburn-haired man at the tiller and the third of those who did not row.
The blond ax-man at the prow moved his left arm out from his side, almost stiffly. It was fisted but for the
forefinger, which pointed. With a nod, though no eyes were turned his way, the man at the stern changed the
pressure of his tanned hands on the tiller. The ship, which was little more than fifty feet in length, did not veer,
but angled to port; eastward, on its southerly bearing.
The blond at the bow glanced back. His nose had once been broken and was askew, nor did he quite close
his mouth, ever.
тАЬIrish,тАЭ he grunted, just loud enough to be heard by three-and-twenty men.
An oarsman to port asked, тАЬReavers?тАЭ