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

and we'd find ourselves fighting for our lives in our own towns. Nay, much
though it grieves me, we can't take you in!"
"We can wish you well, though," Gorkin said, as kindly as he could. "Here, we
can leave you drink, at least." He took his aleskin from his belt and laid it on
the road, then straightened and turned away. "Fare you well-and may the gods
smile on you."
"Fare you well." Morag's voice was thick with tears. "Here, take something to
defend yourself!" She laid her belt knife by the wallet and aleskin, then turned
away too, arms still around Jorak and Rokir. Jorak looked back, eyes swollen.
"Goodbye- and thank you. I wish I could stay to keep you company, but I can't,
if I'm going with them."
"No, you go!" Alea cried, though the tears flowed freely now. "I'd hate myself
forever if you lost your true chance because of my selfishnessl Go, Jorak, and
the gods smile on you!"
She turned away then, and managed to hold back the worst until a glance over her
shoulder showed her that the giants had gone out of sight through the trees.
Then she dropped down on the road and wept and wept, wondering if her heart
would break-and wishing that it would.


4
Magnus had to suppress the impulse to project a call to Herkimer on radio
frequency out of sheer loneliness. If it hadn't been for the road, he'd have
found it hard to believe there were people on this planet, never mind the
photographs he'd seen from orbit. Even then, the road might have been only an
animal track, if it hadn't been ten feet wide. It seemed unusually broad for a
medieval road until Magnus remembered that giants might have laid it out. That
gave him a strange chill down his spine. He found himself trying to believe
giants were only fairy tales.
Well, true enough, these weren't forty feet tall, and no human being could hide
in their beer steins or spend the night in one of their gloves-but they were big
enough to call giants. From what Magnus had seen in the orbital shots, though,
this buffer zone between Midgard and the giants' country might very well have
had ordinary-sized people as well as giants walking about. It was barren enough,
Heaven knew-a broad plain with knee-high grass, and a line of trees to his left
that presumably shaded a watercourse. But there was genuine forest to his right;
it seemed that the road had been built along some sort of natural boundary.
Then some people came around the bend, half a dozen in armor and with battle
axes at their hips, with two adolescents along. Magnus was surprised that the
bend was so close-it had looked much farther away, but the people made it seem
much nearer.
Then he realized that it wasn't the bend that was so close, it was the people
who were so tall.
He stopped and stared, eyes wider and wider as the strangers came nearer and
nearer. For the first time since his adolescent growth spurt, he found himself
looking up at someone-up higher and higher. As they came close, their sheer size
overwhelmed him-not just their height, though he only came up to the chest of
the shortest grownup, and was still a head shorter than the boys. It was their
mass that made him fee! so small, for each of the grown giants was easily twice
as broad in the shoulder and hip as Magnus was. Their legs were virtual tree