"Roads by Seabury Quinn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quinn Seabury)interrupted softly, and dropping to his knees unloosed the
[9] dagger strapped to his wrist as he wormed his way across the courtyard flints. In all the country round about Jerusalem there was no hand more skillful with the knife than that of Joachim, the cut-purse. Softly as the cat that stalks a mouse he crept across the stones, paused and bore his weight on one hand while he drew the other back... a single quick thrust underneath the shoulder-blade, slanting downward to the heart, then the gurgling, blood-gagged cry, the helpless thrashing of the limbs, the fight for breath, and - perhaps the sleeping gladiator had a wallet stuffed with gold, or even copper. They were well paid, these fighting mastiffs from Herod's kennels. The firelight glinted on the plunging knife, and on the golden bracelet clasped about the Northman's arm."Ho! little brother of a rat, would you bite a sleeping man?" the giant's bell-like voice boomed, "And one who never did thee any harm? For shame!" White lines sprang into prominence against the sun-gilt skin, his mighty muscles tightened, and a yelp of pain came from Joachim as the knife dropped from his unnerved fingers and a crackling like the beneath the Northling's grip. "Have mercy, mighty one," Joachim begged. "I thought -" "Aye, that thou didst, thou niddering craven!" came the answer. "Thou thought me sleeping, and like the thief thou art were minded to have my purse and life at once. Now get thee [10] gone from out my sight, thou and those hangdog friends of thine, before I crush that puny neck between my fingers." He spread his hands, great well-shaped, white-skinned hands trained in the wrestler's art and in the wielding of the sword, and the strong white fingers twitched as though already they felt yielding flesh and snapping bone between them. With a frightened skirking, as though they were in truth the rats the Northman named them, the three conspirators slunk out, Joachim the cut-purse nursing his broken right wrist in the crook of his left arm, his two companions close beside him as they sought to gain the exit of the courtyard before the giant Norseman reconsidered and repented of his mercy. |
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