"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Margaret Of Urbs 01 - The Black Flame" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

marches. He has a spell; there's great sorcery in N'Orleans, from the merest warlock up to Martin Sair,
who's blood-son of the Devil himself, or so they say."

"I'd like to see his sorcery against the mountainy's arrow and ball," said Hull grimly. "There's none of
us can't spot either eye at a thousand paces, using rifle. Or two hundred with arrow."

"No doubt; but what if powder flames, and guns fire themselves before he's even across the horizon?
They say he has a spell for that, he or Black Margot."

"Black Margot?"

"The Princess, his half-sister. The dark witch who rides beside him, the Princess Margaret."

"OhтАФbut why Black Margot?"

The farmer shrugged. "Who knows? It's what her ene-mies call her."

"Then so I call her," said Hull.

"Well, I don't know," said the other. "It makes small difference to me whether I pay taxes to
N'Orleans or to gruff old Marcus Ormiston, who's eldarch of Ormiston village there." He flicked his
whip toward the distance ahead, where Hull now descried houses and the flash of a little river. "I've sold
produce in towns within the Empire, and the people of them seemed as happy as ourselves, no more, no
less."

"There is a difference, though. It's freedom."

"Merely a word, my friend. They plow, they sow, they reap, just as we do. They hunt, they
fish, they fight. And as for freedom, are they less free with a warlock to rule them than I with a wizened
fool?"

"The mountainies pay taxes to no one."

"And no one builds them roads, nor digs them public wells. Where you pay little you get less, and I
will say that the roads within the Empire are better than ours."

"Better than this?" asked Hull, staring at the dusty width of the highway.

"Far better. Near Memphis town is a road of solid rock, which they spread soft through some
magic, and let harden, so there is neither mud nor dust."

Hull mused over this. "The Master," he burst out sud-denly, "is he really immortal?"

The other shrugged. "How can I say? There are great sorcerers in the southlands, and the greatest
of them is Martin Sair. But I do know this, that I have seen sixty-two years, and as far back as memory
goes there was always Joaquin Smith in the south, and always an Empire gobbling cities as a hare
gobbles carrots. When I was young it was far away, now it reaches close at hand; that is all the
difference. Men talked of the beauty of Black Margot then as they do now, and of the wizardry of
Martin Sair."