"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 02 - Wild Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

Katla shot him a furious look.
"Towering cliffs, windy uplands, and women bred between wildcats and
trolls; Rockfall's speciality. Just the way I like them."
Tarn Fox grabbed her by the waist and crushed her against his chest.
Katla promptly spat in his eye and at the same moment brought her knee
up hard into his groin, but the mummer's chief had been manhandling
women all his life and knew himself an expert in such matters. Swiveling
his hips, he evaded the main threat and took the wad of saliva on the
cheek where it hung for a moment like cuckoo-spit, then bubbled off down
his chin. Then he grinned fr ear to ear.
"They say that a bit of resistance gets the blood up," Tarn said
cheerfully. "But I'd rather you came to me of your own free will." When she
started to struggle he said, "Hear me out!" and imprisoned her arms in a
time-honored wrestling maneuver executed so neatly that Katla could not
help but experience a brief moment of admiration. "I have a place close to
the docks where we can go and get better acquainted," he added, nuzzling
her neck. Katla's teeth came close to catching his ear; but the mummer
craned his head away with a laugh. "It's not luxurious, but you'll not
notice once we're started. I've been waiting all week for this, little troll. Did
you not think I'd see through your disguise in seconds? I could spot you in
a crowd of a thousand other women, all naked and with bags over their
heads!"
Katla stopped wriggling and stared at him. "You have a most bizarre
imagination, Tarn Fox," was all she could say.
The mummers' chief laughed. "Aye, it is quite creative. You should
make the effort to discover its horizons for yourself."
"Take your hands off her!"
The speaker's voice was pitched low and soft, but his tone was
menacing. "If you don't take your hands off her at once, I'll prick out your
kidney and feed it to the gulls."
Katla spun around and saw that her brother, Halli? who had killed two
men in all his life and was still suffering nightmares as a result? had
appeared as silently as a stoat and had a belt knife pressed into the small
of the mummer's back.
She laughed and extricated herself without too much difficulty from
Tarn Fox's grasp. "It's all right, Halli. No harm done."
Tarn shrugged and stepped away. "Your loss, little wildcat." He winked.
"We'll see what your da says when we get back to Rockfall, eh?" And with
that he moved smartly past the pair of them and made his way between
the curious rowers to where the tillerman stood shouting out his
instructions. A few moments later the crew shipped their oars as the
Snowland Wolf entered the inner harbor, and then everything else was
subsumed by the bustle of landing and unloading.

***

It was close to midnight before Katla and Halli were able to step into
the last of the faerings, as if Tarn Fox's punishment for the insult to his
pride was to delay their discovery of the city as long as he possibly could.
Fretting with impatience, Katla craned her neck over the others in the