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

She knew she should find another tree and hide for the day, but she didn't want
to stay where the boys had gone crashing through the roadside brush to find her,
and the Jotuns had refused her. What with their tracks and the boys', her trail
was far too clear-any band of slave-hunters would see her footprints in the
roadside dust, and would follow her to her tree.
The dizziness passed, and Alea forced herself to start walking again, down the
middle of the road where the clay was packed hard and wouldn't show her tracks.
There was a chance that the slave-hunters would find her before she found
another safe tree, but it was less than the chance that the marks of her
struggle with the boys, and the tracks of the giant patrol, would reveal her old
hiding place. She had to find another tree large enough to hide in and a quarter
mile or more from the scene of the scuffle. She watched her feet, forcing them
to move until she could trust them to keep going, then looked up and was
surprised to see that the bend in the road was there already.
She was even more surprised when the half-dozen Midgarders came around that bend
and saw her.
Their dogs started baying and howling on the instant, and the men shouted and
came running, hands out to catch her. They didn't ask her business or her
name-her size alone was enough to tell them what she was, easily a head taller
than any of them, so she couldn't be anything but a runaway slave. They would
worry whose she was after they'd bound her. They swarmed around her.
Alea swung her staff desperately, managing to knock one man in the head and jab
another in the belly before one of them chopped viciously with a cudgel, and her
staff broke with a loud crack. She swung the butt of it in despair, but another
man seized her wrist and a third caught her around the waist, crowing with
victory. Alea screamed and kicked back.
The man's crow turned to a howl, and the hands let go of her waist. She lashed
about her with the butt of her stick and kicked at the shins of the men in front
of her. One went reeling, hands pressed to his head. Another fell back, hopping
and howling. More hands seized her wrists and her waist, though. Then a rope
whipped about her torso, pinioning her arms, and another man caught her leg. She
howled in anger and horror, kicking at him, but he stepped to the side, holding
the leg up.
A heavier man, with a bruise from her staff already purpling on his forehead,
shouldered his way through to her and cracked a slap across her face. Alea
screamed and, as the hand came back, bit at it, but the man yanked his hand
aside and slammed a fist into her stomach. She doubled over in agony, struggling
for the breath that wouldn't come, but he yanked her chin up and stared into her
face-face to face, for he was a good foot shorter than she.
"Six and a half feet, big dark eyes, straight nose, brown hair-this is the one
that ran from Karke Village, right enough," the slave-hunter said. "Back you go
to your owners, woman, and harshly may they punish you."
Breath came back in a rush. Alea used it for a wordless shout and lunged at the
man, lashing out with her free foot. He cracked another slap across her face and
snarled, "We can hurt worse than you, my lass!"
"We should, too," one of the other men growled. "She's given me a harsh knock,
and I'll be limping for a week!"
"You're right there, Harol," the leader said with an ugly glint in his eye.
"After all, we have to take her back to her village for judgement, but no one
says what kind of condition she has to be in when she gets there-and she has to