"Gardner F. Fox - Kothar 01 - Kothar Barbarian Swordsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fox Gardner F)

They went for more than two hours through the woods, until the wolf
came to a forest glade where stood a little hut roofed with sod, a single
window open to the room inside. The wolf sat back and howled once,
piercingly, then slunk away into the underbrush, leaving Kothar alone.

The young mercenary walked to the door of the hut and lifted his
knuckles to knock, but another hand was before his; the door swung open
and an old hag stood staring up at him. Her ugly face was hairy, and her
nose was long and pointed, but the blue eyes in her ancient face were
bright and gleeful as they searched his height and his youthful strength,
and they lingered long upon the sword he carried at his side.

"Kothar," she said softly, and stepped back.
 He walked into the hut, finding it clean and neat and oddly fragrant
because of the dried herbs that swung from little cordings at the ceiling
beams. A fire burned on a round stone in its middle as a thin grey smoke
rose up to pass through a hole in the sod roof.

He swayed with weariness and the witch looked at him and smiled and
gestured toward a pile of fur robes which formed a bed along one wall. She
said softly, "You are tired, exhausted from the fighting and your wounds
which Afgorkon healed. But now Afgorkon can do no more and you must
sleep."

He did not dispute With her. He was so weary he had seemed to
stumble after the wolf in a walking slumber, so that he thought at times he
was dreaming all that had happened to him. The furs beckoned him; they
were soft and would warm his body, and when he closed his eyelids as he
lay upon them he would dream.

Kothar fell on his back across the robes and his eyelids seemed so heavy
it was painful to hold them open. Yet he must remain awake for just a
little while.

"Elfa?" he asked. "What of Elfa the queen?"

The hag laughed brightly. "She shall come, young man. Sleep now,
sleep." Her blue eyes flirted with him, making him think of Elfa who was
queen in Commoral, for Elfa had witch-eyes such as this, that flirted with
him from time to time, and in his own way, Kothar understood that he
had been half in love with her.

He closed his eyes and slept.

He dreamed, as he knew he would. He dreamed of the single room of
this witch-hut with the sod roof and of the fire on the round stone and of
the smoke and of the hag who went and breathed in the smoke and waved
at it with her hands until the smoke clung to her like a grey garment made
of spiderwebs, hiding her shape and the shapeless garments which she
wore. As the grey smoke touched her garments they fell away, and the hag