"Jennifer Roberson - Sword Dancer 2 - Swordsinger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Jennifer)

wrapped arms and legs around whatever equine parts I could grab, and hugged.
Hard.
I'm big. I'm strong. It might have worked.
Unfortunately, the stud had the benefit of panic.
A horse's head is harder than a man's belly. A horse is stronger than a man. But
I discovered just how hard and how strong as he tossed me aside like a wad of
soiled silk.
--airborn--
Ah, hoolies.
I landed mostly on a tucked right shoulder, but also on the side of my face and
the business end of my sword, sheathed and slung diagonally across my back in
harness. Which meant that while it didn't dig too deeply into the sand, the
blade did provide just enough leverage, as I rolled purposefully toward my


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shoulder blades, to tip me back over onto face and belly.
I sucked up enough sand to seed a new desert and proceeded to cough up my lungs
all over the border between my land, the South, and Del's, the North.
Del. Some help she was. While I hacked and gagged and retched and discovered I
had a bitten, bloody lip, she dismounted (in the normal fashion) and went off to
fetch back the stud, who was wandering in a northwesterly direction for no
discernible reason.
"--flea-bitten--" I spat out sand. "--jug-headed--" More sand. "--lop-eared--"
Blood, this time. I touched my lip with a tentative finger, felt the sting of
salt and sand in the wound. "--thrice-cursed son of a Salset goat!"
I sat up. Scowled horrifically at Del as she brought back the stud. Her
expression was bland, noncommittal; innocence personified. (She is very good at
that.) Certainly she appeared neither amused nor particularly concerned or
sympathetic. But a closer look at guileless blue eyes told me she only bided her
time.
I tongued my lip. "Ought to leave him staked out for the cumfa." I had to pick
my way with words gingerly around the swelling lip, but the intent was clear
enough.
"Long ride on a single horse." So bland. So infuriatingly casual.
I glared. Del began examining the stud for injury.
"He's fine." I paused. "He's fine."
"Just checking."
I glared at her some more, absently admiring the clean lines of her face, so
intent on the stud's condition. Couldn't see much more of her, as she was
swathed in a white silk burnous that pretty well hid arms and legs and all of
her womanly curves, spectacular as they were. In the South, that's the point of
a burnous on a woman: to hide the lady from masculine eyes that might otherwise
become inflamed with lust at the sight of a shapely ankle.
Trouble was, the custom caused difficulties, rather than avoiding them; a
shapely ankle, promising other related anatomical niceties, becomes little more
than an invitation to fantisize about the rest of the woman.
Of course with Del, it took a lot less than an ankle. One glance out of those