"Roads by Seabury Quinn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quinn Seabury)

fury with the fiery wind-blown beard and long fair hair that
streamed unbound upon the night wind. Then Claus stood
face to face with the decurion.
"Now, sayer of great words and doer of small deeds,
thou baby-killer, say, wilt thou play the man's game, or do I
smite thee headless like the criminal thou art?" asked he.
"I did but do my duty, Barbarian," the decurion
answered sulkily. "The great King bade us go through all this
land and take the man-child of each house, if he were under
two years old, and slay him. I know not why. A soldier's duty
is to bear his orders out."
"Aye, and a soldier's duty is to die, by Odin's Twelve
Companions!" Claus broke in. "Take this for Rachael's child,
the widow woman's only son, thou eater-up of little helpless
babes!" And he aimed an axe-blow at the decharch, and never
in his years of fighting in the circus had Claus the Smiter
smitten such a blow. Neither shield nor mail could stop it, for
the axe-blade sheared through both as if they had been
parchment, and the axe-edge fell upon the decharch's neck

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where neck and shoulder join, and cut through bone and
muscle, and cleaving on bit deep into the decharch's breast
until it split his very heart in two, and as the oak tree falls
when fire from heaven blasts it, so fell the soldier of King
Herod in the dust at Claus's feet, and lay there, quivering and
lifeless.
Then Claus unloosed the thong that bound the axe-helve
to his wrist and tossed the weapon up into the air so that it
spun around, a gleaming circle in the silver moonlight, and as
it fell he caught it in his hand again and tossed it up above the
whispering treetops, and sang a song of victory as his fathers
had sung since the days when Northmen first went viking,
and he praised the gods of Valhalla: to Odin, Father of the
Gods, and Thor the Thunderer, and to the beauteous
Valkyrior, choosers of the valiant slain in battle, he gave full
meed of praise, and on the bodies of his fallen foes he kicked
the gray road dust, and spat on them and named them churls
and nidderings and unfit wearers of the mail of men of war.
His frenzy wore itself to calm, and putting up his axe he
turned to look upon the little family he had succored. The
man stood by the donkey's head, holding the lead-strap in
one hand and in the other a stout stick which seemed to have
been chosen for the double purpose of walking staff and
goad. He was some fifty years of age, as the gray that streaked
his otherwise black beard attested, and he was dressed from
neck to heels in a gown of somber-colored woolen stuff