"Anthony Piers - Incarnations Of Immortality 2 - Bearing an Hourglass [uc]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

fashion, and fantastic creatures are becoming unextinct.

"But some creatures do get obstreperous. Most
bleeding-heart liberal, modem governments have bent the
other way so far they've gone off the deep end and out-
lawed poisoning or shooting or using magic to kill these
monsters. So the bad dragons have to be dispatched the
old-fashioned way, by sword."

"Why not just move the bad ones to reservations?"
Norton asked, appalled at the notion of slaying dragons.
He was one of the bleeding hearts the ghost described;

he knew dragons were omery and dangerous, but so were
alligators and tigers. All of them had their right to exist
as species, and the loss of any species was an incalculable
loss to the world. Many highly significant aspects of magic
had been derived from once-suppressed creatures, such
as potency-spells from unicom horns and invulnerable
scale armor from dragon hides. But he realized it would
be pointless to argue such cases with this fortune-hunting
warrior.

Gawain snorted. "Mister, you can't move a dragon!
They're worse than cats! Once a drag stakes out his ter-
ritory, he defends it. Enchant the monster and move it to
a reservation, it just breaks out and returns, twice as
omery as before, killing innocent people along the way.
No, I respect dragons as opponents, but the only really
good dragon is a dead one."




6 Bearing An HmvgUiss

Norton sighed inwardly. Perhaps it was a good thing
for the world that Gawain was now a ghost.

'That was my specialty," Gawain continued. "The hand-
slaying of dragons. It was dangerous work, to be sure—
but the rewards were considerable. Because it was quasi-
legal, fees were high. I estimated that five or six years of
dragon slaying would make me independently wealthy.
That was the point: to prove that I wasn't simply inher-
iting wealth, but could produce it on my own. I knew my
family would be pleased; every man in it increased the
fortune, if he lived long enough."

Gawain meditated for a moment, and Norton did not