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

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Alea was just managing to begin to drowse when a crow of triumph jolted her
awake, and the tree shook. She grabbed at the limb to her right in a panic, then
remembered that she had tied herself to the trunk and couldn't fall.
"Come down, my pretty!" a hoarse voice called, and the tree shook again.
Looking down, Alea saw two boys standing by the trunk and joining their strength
to shake it.
"Come down and play!" one of them called. "Rokir and I are tired of our own
games!"
Their games hadn't been much fun, from the look of them. They were gaunt from
short rations and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.
"Pretty legs, Jorak!" Rokir said. "How would they feel?" His voice broke on the
last word. Judging by the sound and by their pimples, they weren't very far into
adolescence. Alea tucked her skirts tight to hide her legs from below, trying to
ignore the panic that hammered in her breast as she examined them more closely.
As ordinary boys, they would have seemed well-proportioned and muscular, but as
young giants, they were gangly and scrawny-and giants they were, for their heads
reached above the branch she had had to jump to catch on her way up. That made
them eight feet tall or more, definitely giants, but with a foot or two of
growth yet to come.
"Pretty indeed!" Rokir answered. "I'll touch and see!" He swung himself up on a
limb-and it broke, spilling him to the ground.
Jorak guffawed. "You can't go climbing as you used to, Rokir! It takes
grandfathers of trees to hold us now!"
"All right, so I've a lot to learn." Rokir scrambled to his feet, red-faced. "So
have you, Jorak!"
They hadn't been raised as giants, then, for if they had, they would have known
what size of trees they could climb, and which were too small for their weight.
That meant they were Midgarders, boys who had been cast out of their villages
for being too tall, obviously on their way to becoming giants. In spite of her
fright, Alea felt a rush of sympathy for them, even tenderness, for she was
twice their age at least, and had just learned what they had learned-that the
self-righteousness of the Midgarders hid an unbelievable intensity of cruelty.
She wished she couldn't believe it.
Then the boys shook the tree again. She hugged the branch to hold herself
upright, but her skirts fell loose once more. Rokir whistled with an admiration
that held a mocking echo, Jorak leered up at her, and the sympathy drowned under
a flood of fear. Alea knew the sound, knew the expression, and was determined
never to let a man catch her again, even if he was a fuzz-checked boy.
An eight-foot-tall, three-hundred-fifty-pound boy.
"Come down, pretty!"Jorak called. "Or I'll shake you down!"
"You?" Rokir scoffed. "You wouldn't know what to do with her if you had her!"
"Just what I've done before!" But Jorak's voice struck an echo of uncertainty.
"What would you know about it anyway, pie-face?"
"I'll show you, as soon as she falls into our arms!" Rokir said with some
heat=too much heat, Alea thought; it struck a false note.
Then the tree lashed about so wildly that Alea cried out, hugging the limb to
her right, afraid the trunk would snapbut it didn't. She thought frantically. If