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

have heard his words. Cupping his hands to his lips, the thickly thewed
mercenary bellowed again and again, until his ears rang with the sound of
his own voice.

"Kazazael! Kazazael! Kazazael!" he roared.

The screaming stopped. A hoarse throat cried back at him. "Who calls
the name of Kazazael the accursed?"

"Kothar of Cumberia, the sellsword. I've come to help you."

"No man can help me now!"
 Kazazael began screaming once more.

Kothar scratched his golden head. He must find some way to help the
man, Queen Elfa had commanded him to do so, saying that she could
never defeat Lord Markoth unless Kazazael were free to help her with his
necromancies. Yet if Kazazael did not know the way to his own release,
how was he to accomplish it? He bit his lower lip with his strong white
teeth, thinking hard.

"Kazazael—will anything stop the pain?" he cried, unable to listen
further to that awful screaming.

"Only one thing."

"And what will that thing be?"

"The cloak of the sea serpent Iormungar."

"How do I find the cloak?"

The red thing which had been Kazazael shouted down at him, but there
was hopelessness in his tones, and a resignation to defeat which Kothar
did not like. A man must make a fight of it, he thought, even though there
is nothing left to him but black despair. Still, he listened to the
instructions Kazazael gave to him, and he put them deep in his mind so he
would not forget.

Then he turned Greyling on the forest path and sent him galloping
away from the screaming until it faded out. Still he held the grey horse to
its mad pace, as if the pounding of its hoofbeats would blot from his
memory the sight of the thing in the sky.

He was still hungry, though he felt a touch of guilt about it. Kazazael
was suffering far worse than hunger pangs. He tightened his belt two
notches and reflected that the sword Frostfire and the warhorse Greyling
were all very well, and he was proud of them, being a soldier, but if he
might have a bowl of seafood stew or a thick slash of deer meat, he could
appreciate the tools of his trade more properly.