"Clayton Emery - Robin Hood and the Pirates" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

Robin Hood and the Pirates
by Clayton Emery

"'Spose Richard'll send someone to fetch us back?"
"Let 'em. The first seven and ten can stop arrows."
Two men trudged the shore of the aquamarine
Mediterranean. One was a knight in dusty leather
coat of iron plates, a dirty quilted cap, broken boots
that let in the dust, and a worn sword in a worn
scabbard. In one hand he carried a battered Norman
helmet, and in the other an impossibly long bow,
crazed and checked in dark lines from the heat, yet
gleaming with oil and hours of polishing. A quiver of
bright arrows rattled softly at his back.
Beside him walked a giant in a tattered gambeson
belted with rope. His shoes were mere scraps of
horsehide. His braid, thick as a horse's tail, was
bleached almost white, for he never wore anything
on his head. Over his shoulder he carried a
quarterstaff of red-glowing cypress eight feet long.
On a string hung a pointed Saracen helmet, his sole
booty and pay for two years' crusading.
They had waterskins strung around them, but they
were flat, and the redware jug in the giant's hand
was empty. A goatherd had promised there was a
well ahead, just a few miles, but that had been miles
back. The goatherd might have lied, since he was
Muslim and they Christians.
The giant went on. "From outlaw to pardoned
freeman to vassal of the king to outlaw again. Makes
a man wonder where he's going. In a circle or
what."
"We're going to Jaffa."
"We're going home. That's a circle."
"If we make it."
Dust chuffed around their feet as high as their
knees. The road was more stone than dust, but
plenty of dust. The sea rolled away at their right
hands. The land rolled away in sand dunes and
coarse grass. Other travellers passed them, local
people in voluminous robes colored saffron and
black and red and blue, but they said little.
"Let 'em come," the knight grumbled. "Let 'em try
and take us. We'll cut down the first with arrows,
then more with sword and quarterstaff. After that,
they can have us. Let 'em draw and quarter us and
string our guts along the road for the buzzards. I
don't care."
"You're jolly company."
"Me and three thousand ghosts."