"Janny Wurts - That way lies Camelot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wurts Janny)

had summed up gruffly. 'But you will never be strong enough to take
the place of a man.'
Yet the nets were heavy and the sloop was old, its scarred,
patched planking in constant need of repairs. A girl's hands were

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better than going without, or so her mother insisted. Grudgingly,
Uncle Ciondo agreed that Aunt Kala would do better if an empty chair
no longer faced her through mealtimes. Sabin was given blankets and a
lumpy cot in the loft, and cast off sailor's clothing that smelled of
cod and oakum, poor gifts, but precious for the fact they could ill
be spared.
Her lapse over the jacket could not go unremedied.
She fumbled and found her damp boots in the dark. Too lazy to
bother with trousers, she pulled on the man-sized fisher's smock that
hung halfway to her knees. The loose cuffs had to be rolled to free
her hands. She knotted the waist with rope to hold it from billowing
in the wind, although in the depths of the night, no one was abroad
to care if she ran outside half-clothed.
The board floor squeaked to her step, and the outer latch clanged
down as she shut the weathered plank door. 'Sabin,' she admonished as
she hooked a heel on the door stoop and caught herself short of a
stumble, 'Don't you go tripping and banging, or someone will mistake
you for trouble and shoot you in the back for a trt)ll.'
Except that no one in her village kept so much as a bow. The
fisherfolk had only rigging knives and cutlery for the kitchen, and
those were risky things to be throwing at trolls in the dark. Given
any metal at all, and a troll will someday do murder with it; or so
her mother used to threaten to scare out her habit of mislaying
things. Sabin sighed at her failure since her jacket was not hanging
as it should to dry on the hook by the hearth.
Cloud cover smothered the moon. Past the garden gate, the trail
to the sea plunged deep into shadow. She stubbed her toes on corners
of slate, and cursed like a fishwife since her uncle was not there to
scold. The path switched back once, twice, in tortuous descent.
Westward it was faced by sheer rock cliffs, moss-grown, and stuffed
with old bird nests in the niches. The moon re-emerged. The pines
that clawed foothold on the lower slope moaned in the lash of the
winds, their trunks in stark silhouette against silver4ace shcets of
spent breakers as they slid in fan curves back to sea. Sabin tossed
tangled hair from her eyes. The night was wild around her. She could
feel the great waves thud and boom over the barrier reefs even
through the leather of her bootsoles.
A night to bring boat wrecks, she knew, the sea in her blood
enough now that her ear had attuned to its moods. She hurried

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as the slate path leveled out and gave way at last to sand, ground of
the same black stone, and unpleasant with chill in the dark. The last
fringe of trees passed behind and she started across the crescent