"T. H. White - The Once and Future King" - читать интересную книгу автора (White T.H)

Gareth remained between pain and amazement.


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"But they mean it," he protested.
Out of the moment of astonishment, Gawaine took the lead and forged into action.
"Agravaine, I am the head of the clan, and I forbid ye."
"You forbid me."
"Yes, I do forbid ye; for ye will be a sair fule if ye do."
"The honest Gawaine," remarked Mordred, "thinks you are a sair fule."
This time the towering fellow swung on him like a shying horse.
"Nane o' that!" he shouted. "Ye think I winna hit ye because ye are crookit, and ye take advantage. But I
wull hit ye, mannie, if ye sneer."
Mordred heard his own voice speaking coldly, seeming to come from behind his ears.
"Gawaine, you surprise me. You have produced a sequence of thought."
Then, as the giant came towards him, the same voice said: "Go on. Strike me. It will show your
courage."
"Ah, do stop, Mordred," pleaded Gareth. "Can't you stop this nagging for a minute?"
"Mordred wouldn't nag, as you call it," interjected Agravaine, "if you didn't bully."
Gawaine exploded like one of the new-fashioned cannons. He swung away from Mordred, a baited bull,
and shouted at them both.
"My soul to the devil, will ye be quiet or will ye clear out? Can we have no peace in the family ever?
Shut yer trap, in the name of God, and leave this daft clatter about Sir Lancelot,"
"It is not daft," said Mordred, "nor shall we leave it."
He stood up.
"Well, Agravaine," he asked. "Do we go to the King? Is any other coming?"
Gawaine planted himself in their path.
"Mordred, ye shallna go."
"Who is to stop me?"
"I am."
"Brave fellow," remarked the icy voice, still from somewhere in the air, and the humpback moved to
pass.
Gawaine put out his red hand, with golden hairs on the back of the fingers, and pushed him back. At the

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same time Agravaine put out his own white hand, with fat fingers, to the hilt of his sword.
"Don't move, Gawaine. I have a sword."
"You would have a sword," cried Gareth, "you devil!"
The younger brother's life had suddenly fitted into a pattern and recognized itself. Their murdered
mother, and the unicorn, and the man now drawing, and a child in a store-room flashing a dirk: these
things had made him cry out.
"All right, Gareth," snarled Agravaine, as white as a sheet, "I know what you mean, and now I draw."
The situation passed out of control: they began acting like puppets, as if it had happened beforeтАФwhich
it had. Gawaine, at the sight of steel, went into one of his blind rages. He swung away from Mordred,