"Christopher Stasheff - Rogue Wizard 07 - A Wizard In Midgard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

care! I'd rather this than have to bed that beast again!" Then she broke off
into more tears.
Gar reached out with his mind to try to speed the healing of her back, but could
feel no response. In desperation, he let his awareness expand, feeling,
listening, for Kawsa's mind. He felt a huge surge of relief when he found it,
glowing in the mental, darkness like a coal on the hearth, burning with lust and
cruelty. He reached inside, found the ganglion that would give the signal to
stop the the flow of blood in exactly the right place, thought hard at it-but
the synapse functioned as smoothly as though his thoughts were nowhere near it.
As indeed they were not, for he could listen, could hear another's thoughts,
follow the nerve-signals down individual pathways-but his numbed brain couldn't
send out the impulse to change that path, to change anything. Magnus withdrew
quickly, not wanting to hear. anything, to feel anything secondhand, feeling
completely useless, completely alone, in the dark.
Someone started a slow and mournful song, almost a dirge. Others joined in,
until half the slaves in the barracks were singing, adults and children all. A
cry came from across the way, but they sang all the louder for it.
A hand grasped Gar's shoulder, and his glance leaped up into the gloom, body
tensing to fight-but the man's eyes were only a little higher than his own, even
though Gar was sitting while the other was standing, and the gaze.was gentle and
filled with pity. "First time you've ever had to witness something like this, is
it, lad?"
"No," Gar answered, "but it's the first time I haven't been able to do anything
about it."
He had never felt so helpless in his life.
When full darkness fell, and the gloom thickened so that he could scarcely see a
foot in front of his face, Gar stretched himself out on his moldy pallet,
writhed about to try to find a way for none of his bruises to come in contact
with the straw, and listened to the sounds of the other slaves as he lay waiting
for sleep. There was the muffled sobbing of Greta, Rega, and the other woman
whom one of the overseers had chosen for a few minutes' pleasure; there were
snores from those who had been lucky enough to find slumber and, here and there,
the gasps and little cries of delight of pairs of slaves who had found the only
pleasure left to them. Gar reflected bitterly that Steward Wulfsson couldn't
even afford privacy for them, though they didn't seem to need it.
A soft rustle of cloth near him made him look up to see a small woman folding
her skirts to sit beside him, looking down with a quizzical smile. "I've been
watching you all evening, stranger."
"I'm Gar," he whispered. "You?"
"Hilda," she said. "Life's bitter, lad. We, too, could find a little sweetness
in it."
"Thank you, but after what I've seen tonight, I'd hate myself if I reached out
to touch a woman." Gar groped to give her hand a quick squeeze anyway, then
dropped it. "I'm surprised the steward allows his slaves to have any pleasures
at all. Why doesn't he just keep the men and women apart?"
"Why?" Hilda actually giggled. "Why, he can't depend on enough free women
bearing children who are too large or too small, lad. He has to make sure he'll
have more slaves tomorrow."
"Breeding," Gar said sourly.
"He calls it that," Hilda told him. "We call it love." She looked off into the