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

"Do you suppose some of those giants could be women?" Magnus asked.
"Quite possibly," Herkimer answered, "but it is difficult to say. They're all
wearing the same armor, over similar tunics and cross-gartered leggins."
"But some of them don't have beards," Magnus pointed out, "and the ones who
don't, have breastplates that bulge outward more than the men's do."
"It is possible," the computer admitted. "Odd that their men would not object to
risking them, though."
"Maybe not, when they're so badly outnumbered," Magnus said, "and when any one
of them is big enough to be a match for three of the Vikings. Of course, they
come at the giants in squads of four. . . ."
"We must count it a hypothesis to be examined more closely," Herkimer cautioned.
"We need more data."
"How strange those giants look." Magnus couldn't help thinking of them as
anything but giants, when they were half again as tall as the Vikings and five
times as massive. Their thighs looked to be two feet thick, and their upper arms
more than a foot. Their hips were four feet wide, and their shoulders five.
"They're so broad and thick that they seem short."
"Perhaps they are," Herkimer suggested. "We really have no artifact by which to
judge their scale."
"True enough," Magnus admitted. "I'm assuming that the Vikings are of normal
size for human beings-somewhere between five and six feet tall. If they are, the
giants are nine feet tall on the average. I suppose they need such thick legs to
support all the weight that goes with that extra height."
"Still, we are only assuming," the computer reminded him. "For all we know, the
ones you call Vikings may be only two feet tall."
"Well, yes," Gar admitted. "But they have the proportions of normal men, and if
they were shorter, they should also be more delicate-so I'm betting they're of
normal size. Oh, I and by the way, yes, I know they aren't really Vikings."
The Vikings of Terra's past had been ordinary Scandinavian citizens at home who
had gone raiding the shores of richer countries to supplement their incomes-or,
in some cases, for their whole incomes. A great number of Norwegians, Swedes,
and Danes stayed home and farmed-but when they went to war, they wore the same
armor and carried the same shields and weapons as the Vikings did.
"They do dress like medieval Scandinavians," Herkimer admitted, "and most people
associate horned helmets, beards, and war-axes with Vikings."
"Yes, you'd almost think they had stepped off the screen of a dramatic epic,"
Magnus said. "Of course, they're probably very ordinary farmers and tradesmen at
home, not medieval pirates. They've simply been called up for war."
There certainly was no sea in evidence, except for the coastline hundreds of
miles to the south. Only one central area of a small continent had been
Terraformed; the rest was desert or tundra. This battle had taken place on the
eastern border of the land, assuming that the mountain range on the photographed
map before Magnus was indeed a border. "Zoom out," he told Herkimer, and as the
giants dwindled in the viewscreen, the Vikings came back into sight. Sure
enough, they were out of the foothills where they had fought the battle and into
the meadows and marshlands beyond, carrying their dead and wounded.
"The mountains do seem to be the borderland," Herkimer said. "I think we-can
infer that they are the giants' homeland."
To the east, the giants finally broke their formation and , brought out
stretchers to carry home their dead.