"Sorcerer's Son" - читать интересную книгу автора (Phyllis Eisenstein)

The boy’s father threw the coins down into the dust. “I don’t want a monster’s money.”

Then he reached out slowly and pulled the rag from Sepwin’s head. “Open your eye.”

Blinking against the sunlight, the beggar obeyed.

Cray was too far away to see the color of the eye, but when the tall villager lunged forward to close his hands about Sepwin’s throat, he could guess it. With one quick motion he jerked his sword from its scabbard at Gallant’s saddle and, shouting, raised it high. All three villagers had fallen upon Sepwin by then and borne him to the ground under his horse’s agitated feet; if they heard Cray’s voice above their own wild cries, they paid it no attention. Cray kicked the nearest man with one booted foot and then, swinging the sword once above his head, he brought the flat of the blade down on the fellow’s buttocks. The villager let go of Sepwin immediately and rolled over, scrambling away on his hands and knees, his terrified gaze on the sword. Cray brought it down again, and yet again, and added a few more judicious kicks, and Sepwin’s attackers backed off.

“I’ll kill the first one who lays another hand on him!” Cray shouted. With his free hand, he pulled Sepwin to his feet. “Get on that horse,” he hissed, pushing the beggar toward the nervously dancing animal.

Sepwin staggered and coughed, clutching his throat, but he managed to mount, and he did not need another order from Cray to kick his horse to a gallop. By the time Cray vaulted into his saddle, Sepwin’s horse was leaping the low wall at the edge of the village and speeding west along the road. Cray followed. He glanced back only once, to see the three villagers standing behind the wall, shaking their fists at the departing strangers. The children and a few other inhabitants of the settlement had joined them, and they all clustered close together, as if hemmed in by invisible boundaries. No one stepped beyond the wall.

Sepwin rode, his body bent low to his horse’s back. Cray caught up and pulled abreast, calling for him to slow down, but Sepwin paid no attention. Soon his horse’s sides were covered with white foam, and Gallant, too, had begun to sweat.

“You’ll kill your horse!” shouted Cray.

Sepwin looked at him with wild eyes, and from this distance Cray could see the

difference in color, the darkness of the right and the paleness of the left.

“They’ll never catch us!” shouted Cray. “You must stop!”

Sepwin shook his head.

“You’re safe!” Cray screamed, and then he eased back on his own reins, slowing Gallant to a prancing, snorting stop. He sat still in the middle of the road while Sepwin disappeared in the distance ahead.

“I didn’t buy that horse to have you kill it!” he shouted, but he knew that the beggar was too far away to hear.

He let Gallant walk then and cool off, and he looked back occasionally, even though he was sure that no one was following. The afternoon had waned considerably when he came upon Sepwin and his horse in a stand of trees that marked the edge of the

cultivated fields. The road forked there, the northerly path skirting the grain, the westerly leading into rolling land of intermittent forest and tall, wild grasses. Sepwin was rubbing his mount down vigorously with the gray blanket. Both of his eyes were uncovered, the rag bandage left behind in the village. At Cray’s approach he moved behind his horse, placing it between them like a wall. Gallant, though, was so much taller than the village nag that Cray could look over the latter at Sepwin.

“Good evening,” said Cray. “I trust you had a pleasant ride.”

“You may jest,” muttered Sepwin, “you with two eyes of the same color.”

“You won’t run away from me, will you, Master Feldar?”

“Should I?”

“I don’t care about your eyes.”

Sepwin leaned against his horse, arms crossed upon its back. “Everyone cares,” he said.

“This was not the first time that I’ve run from folk. Sometimes they throw stones instead of attacking me with their hands.”

“But why?”

Sepwin closed the brown eye, then opened it and closed the blue. “Which one do you think is the evil eye?”