"Coyne, John - Hobgoblin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Coyne John)

"It's all right, Ba. Everything is all right. I'm fine." He kept talking, watching as her face filled with fear.

Scott flipped the blue card, laid it face down on the table. In capsule form it described the giant which Brian Boru had to defeat in battle before he could reach Lough Neagh.

Type: Brobdingnagian
Frequency: Very rare
Armour Class: 10
Moves: 10 feet
Size: 52 feet and staunch
Intelligence: Low
Alignment: Chaotic evil
Magic Resistance: Standard
Weapons: Fangs
Special Attack: Poison sting within 20 feet
Special Defense: Amphibian
Language: Gaelic

Scott sighed. It was worse than he had feared. The Brobdingnag was a new card in the Hobgoblin game and Brian Boru had never faced one before. Scott sat back in the chair, trembling with nervousness, realizing that it might happen today. Brian Boru might be killed.

"Well," Barbara said, turning to the positive side of the problem as she always did when troubled, "let's first see what the doctor says. There's no need to get too excited. After all, you had a physical two years ago."
"Three years ago."
"Three, then, and everything was fine." She had taken off her coat and boots and begun to straighten the kitchen, to wash the few dishes in the sink, to keep herself busy. "But, darling," she went on, "you just have to think about cutting back."
"Ba, you know I can't just work nine to five. When the factory is in operation, I have to be at the plant."
"Sell the plant! I'd rather have you do that than die on me at forty." She began to cry, leaning against the sink, looking out at the backyard and terrace, all under a smooth blanket of pure white snow.
"Ba, come on, please," Warren whispered. He was behind her, his arms around her tightly. Sometimes he hugged her so hard it hurt. He was careless with his strength, she knew. He thought it would last forever. "I'm not feeling well, honey-that's all. I've had a few restless nights and naturally I'm exhausted. Who wouldn't be? But I'm not selling the plant. Granddad started printing in this town. We employ eighty people now and by the time Scotty takes over there's going to be a lot more."
"Scotty is only sixteen, honey, and he's told you he's not interested in the printing business."
"Oh, he'll feel different when he gets older." Warren released her, as if he didn't like her disagreeing with him.
"He's not like you, Warren-or like me, either, for that matter," Barbara continued. "He's not interested in sports, as you are, or art, as I am. He's really a missing link in our gene pool. Some days I don't even think he's ours." She turned and smiled wryly at her husband, but he had gone back to the table and sat there looking pensive.
"I suspect he'll stay in academics," she went on, "become a teacher. You see how he is on vacations. He'd rather stay up in his room reading The Chronicles of Amber. He's just not gregarious the way you are. I can't imagine his going to the country club, making contacts, getting business for Gardiner & Sons."
She had never confronted Warren this way about their son and her directness surprised even her. It was not her way. She had always lived in her husband's shadow. He was so forceful, so sure of himself that she had just been carried along on the quick tide of his energy.
Warren did not respond. He was thinking of when he had driven Scott back to school after the Thanksgiving vacation, and what a good time they had had, the two of them off together. Scott had wanted to know what it had been like in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, and he had talked for nearly the entire two-hour drive, describing how they had fought from street to street, flushing out the Vietcong.
The boy had been mesmerized, Warren recalled, and he smiled thinking how much pleasure it had given him, bragging to his son as if he'd been some kind of war hero. It was a story he would never have told Scott if Barbara had been around. Scott had a brave, tough side that his mother never saw, or didn't understand when she did see it. But Warren understood it, saw it in Scott's love of science fiction adventure books and that war game he was always playing Hobgoblin. Scott was his father's boy, and the two of them knew it, even if Barbara didn't.
"Well, we can't worry about that," he said. "Let's just wait a year or so, then we'll know what will become of Scotty." Warren planted his huge hands on the kitchen table and stood. "I'm going outside and shovel off that front walk."
"No, Warren, don't!"
"Honey, at least two inches have fallen since I got home, and the Beavens will be here in a couple of hours. They'll be up to their ankles in it by then."
"I'll shovel it!"
"Ba, don't be silly." He laughed at her concern as he took his parka and boots from the hall closet. "It's ten minutes' work. My God, I carried a ton of paper this morning and didn't even lose my breath. You're talking to the old nose guard, honey, twenty-eight games without an injury." He sat down again at the table and began to put on his heavy boots, breathing hard as he leaned over, struggling with the laces. It was twenty years since he'd played football, and his bulky body was no longer in condition. It wasn't that he was fat, Barbara thought, just huge. Whatever room he sat in, he filled the space like a monolith.
"There!" He sat up. He was smiling, satisfied. His face was on fire.
"Darling, look at yourself." She laid her cool palms on his cheeks and was frightened by the heat.
"Ba, it's ten minutes. Besides, the house is stuffy." As he passed, he leaned down and kissed her lightly on the check, as one might a child. There was always that element in their marriage. Often Barbara felt as if she and Scotty were both his children.
"You're just being reckless with yourself, Warren," she called after him.
"If I'm going to have a heart attack over a few inches of snow, honey, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not going to sit around worrying where my next breath is coming from." Then he was gone, out of the kitchen and down the hallway. She could only see his huge back, lumbering along, as she sat in the kitchen chair, filled with the sense that she would never see Warren alive again.
He had been the same in college. He was never happier than after a game when he had been bruised and cut up from playing. She hadn't worried either, back then. She had found him daring, this wonderful, battling knight of hers.

"Brian Boru, what is your wish?" the Dealer asked.
Scott had moved his lead miniature one square on the Battle board, placing Brian next to the Brobdingnagian. Mr. Speier had built an enchanted forest at one edge of the table, carving styrofoam packaging into trees, ruins and small mountains. These he had painted in somber colors, and Scott could almost feel this enchanted forest, smell the vegetation, see the heavy mist surround the valleys beyond Lough Neagh.
"The dice," Scott announced.
"The dice? Oh, God, Gardiner, no!" Rob Evans protested. "It's too risky."
"The dice," Scott demanded. "Brian Boru is ready to attack."
Evans leaned across the Battleboard, gesturing with both hands as he talked. "Brian Boru is our only hope, Scott. Christ, Boobach is off in the Isle of Skye, and McNulty's dumb monk is all the way south of Connaught." He gestured at their positions on the Battleboard. "We're spread out all over the fuckin' landscape!"