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

trunks, and their arms would have shamed a gorilla.
They weren't looking any more friendly than that gorilla, either. The oldest
man-at least, to judge by the gray in his hair-rested his hand on the haft of
his axe and demanded, "Who are you, Midgarder? And why are you here?"
"My name is Gar Pike," Magnus said, trying to imitate their accent.
The leader couldn't help it; his face quirked into a smile. "Your parents didn't
really name you that!"
They hadn't, so Gar decided on belligerence. "And what's wrong with my name, I'd
like to know?"
"Why, a gar pike is a big fish, and you're scarcely a minnow!" the leader said.
It was the first time in fifteen years that anyone had called Gar small. He
found he didn't like it, especially since it was true, given the present
company. "All right, Gar is short for Edgar, and Pike has been a family name for
centuries." He carefully didn't say whose.
"Well enough, and pardon my rudeness," the leader said gruffly. "I am called
Gorkin. Why have you come to this no-one's-land, Gar Pike?"
For a moment, Gar stood amazed by the giant's courtesy-after all, it was himself
who was the intruder. But he pulled himself together and answered, "I've come
from far away, and the. .."What had the giant called him? Midgarder, that was
it! ". . . the Midgarders enslaved me. They said I was too tall, too close to
being a giant." He managed a sour smile. "They seem to have been mistaken."
"Not so much as you might think," Gorkin said. "We've children who grow no
bigger than you, some even shorter. But you're no child of ours, and far too
small to become one of us." He clapped one of the boys on the shoulder. "Jorak,
now, he's only fourteen, and already taller than you by a head. He's due to grow
two feet more at least, and fill out to a proper size-but how old are you,
foreigner? Thirty, if you're a day!"
"Well, I'm more than a day, that's true," Gar said slowly, "and you guessed
well. I'm thirty-one."
"Two in one day!" the woman beside Gorkin said-and Gar was amazed to realize she
was indeed a woman. But her face was more finely featured than Gorkin's, her
hair flowed down around her shoulders, and her armor bore two huge bulges that
Gar found not at all stimulating. He did wonder who the other of the "two in one
day" was-and what. Gorkin shook his head sadly. "We can't take you in,
foreigner. For all we know, you might be spying for the Midgarders-and you've
surely grown as much as you're going to, at your age. Why, you're almost small
enough to be a Midgarder, and certainly as skinny. Besides, if you're like the
rest of your kind, you've been raised to hate and fear giants, and you're too
old to have a change of heart there."
Both boys glanced up at him, then looked away, sheepish and guilty.
"They were both raised as Midgarders," Gorkin explained, "but they're young
enough to learn they've had lies poured into their ears from their cradles."
"But I never saw this man before, not in my village or any where in the barony!"
Jorak protested.
"Nor me," Rokir said, "and my barony was one over from his."
"His accent is strange," the woman pointed out.
"It is that," Gorkin admitted. "Might be you're from far away indeed,
foreigner."
"Yes, and you believe it, Gorkin," the woman said, "so you'd be calling him
`stranger,' not 'foreigner.' "