"Joel Rosenberg - Hour of the Octopus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

grasses rimming the pond and dashed across, some catching fish, most not.
Then the pond lay silent, its glassy surface broken only by the last ripples of the birds' wakes.
Where the path broke on the meadow, it opened on a low green marble podium large enough for the
two of us to stand comfortably, then bent to the right, cupping the edge of the pasture. The far side of the
podium was occu-pied by a waist-high table where a dark silver pitcher sat, its bright sides beaded with
dew to the halfway point. A tall stemmed glass stood next to the pitcher; Arefai set his bow down on the
table and poured himself some of the golden, bubbly liquid, drinking deeply before he set the glass back
on the table.
I was going to muffle a couple of commentsтАФ something about how I had no idea whether we were
first going to see a quail as opposed to a deer and doubted he did, either; something about how I would
be lucky to be able to shoot an arrow well enough to hit the groundтАФ when a covey of quail took flight
across the field from us, their wings making the muffled applause sound of feathers beating against
feathers.
Arefai's string twanged. I wasn't watching closely enough to mark the arrow's flight, but I did see a
bird fall from the sky, its head tumbling in a different direction than its body.
The body had barely bounced once on the ground when a huntsman leaped out from the brush,
snatched it up, and disappeared back into the leafy cover.
"That was a plump one," he said. "And it will be tasty at dinner tonight."
Arefai's smile was modestly modest, but it disappeared when he looked down to see that I hadn't
shot my arrow.
I shrugged, as though to point out that everything had happened so quickly that I hadn't had time to
even think about shooting, but he dismissed it with a glare. If it had been anybody but Arefai, I would
have wondered at what secret motivation caused him to care one way or another, but it was Arefai, after
all.
'The arrow, please," he said, holding his hand out, palm up.
I handed him the half-moon arrow; he set it down on the table.
 "The fishing arrow is next," he said, as we walked down the path to where it exited into darkness on
the far side of the meadow. "We shall see if you can manage a trout."
The fishing arrow, I discovered, was headed by a triple prong, each prong barbed, and it was
marked halfway up the shaft by a thin gold ring. A length of silken string was secured to the head of the
arrow, which fit loosely over the shaft.
I was going to make some mention of that until I no-ticed that Arefai had removed the head of his
arrow as though to check it, then slipped it back on.
The path snaked back and forth down a steep slope, each turn rimmed in gold leaf, until it dumped us
out next to a bridge over a stream that was perhaps two manheights wide, no deeper than knee-high
anywhere.
The sandy bank had been smoothed into shape and rip-ples had been combed into the sand. Despite
the cool of the morning, it warmed my feet pleasantly.
A manheight oaken column stood on the bank, weath-ered and varnished to a rich texture and high
sheen, a bur-nished brass ring projecting from its top. Arefai quickly bound one end of his silken line to
the ring, paying out silk as he walked away.
Stepping stones crossed upstream of the bridge. Each
stone, about the width of a dinner plate, had nesting curves carved into its top, like the floor of the
baths. Arefai leaped lightly from the bank to the nearest of the stones, then step-step-stepped out to the
middle of the stream, nocking his fishing arrow as he did, careful to keep it clear of the line. He stood,
immobile as a statue, waiting.
I took up a position on the next two stones. There were no fish in the stream that I could see, from
where the wa-ter rippled just beneath my feet to where the stream ap-peared from around the bend. I
opened my mouth to make some comment, but Arefai's glare kept me silent.
We hadn't been waiting long when the water rippled ahead, just at the bend.