"Leo Frankowski - Stargard 2 - High-Tech Knight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

his equipage. They say he has a pavilion light enough to hold in the palm of your hand; it's said to have
the property of keeping out noxious insects. He has silver pots and plates, lighter than a cobweb. He has
a knife with a dozen blades that fold to a size smaller than your finger. He has another instrument of the
same size that produces fire at the touch of a lever and a sleeping cloak that grows shut to keep the cold
out. He gave Sir Miesko a device with a needle that always points north, to guide him in the dark. That
needle burns with a green fire but never is it consumed."

"I could have used that last night," I said. The beer was truly fine.

Sir Bodan ignored me. "He gave Lambert an object that makes far things look close. Some of the girls
here can show you incredibly tiny needles they had of him. And the peasants! He gave hundreds of
parchment packages of seeds to the peasants, each package with writing and a beautiful painting on it.
Most of the seeds are sprouting and there are some damn strange shoots coming up in Okoitz!"

"He must be a man of great wealth."

"Fabulous wealth. He arrived here with a chest of gold and silver worth 120,000 silver pence!"



file:///G|/rah/Leo%20Frankowski%20-%20Stargard%202%20-%20High-Tech%20Knight.txt (13 of 191)6/12/2004 1:20:11 AM
 file:///G|/rah/Leo%20Frankowski%20-%20Stargard%202%20-%20High-Tech%20Knight.txt

"Then... then why does he stay in a back woods place like Silesia?" I asked around the bread in my
mouth.

"Who knows why a wizard does what he does?"

"Ah, yes. I saw his wheels and loom. He's a mighty wizard."

"Yet there's no magic in those machines in the great hall. I've been over every inch of them and there's
naught there but boards and thread. They're clever, mind you. Damned clever. But they're still just things
of wool and wood."

"Indeed?" A wench refilled my bowl.

"Then there's Conrad's sword. It's a skinny thing with but a single edge, yet with it Count Lambert-in
front of a hundred witnesses took the head off a fully grown pig with a single blow; and when Conrad
became angered with a blacksmith, he chopped the anvil in half."

"Well, I can sympathize with that," I said. "But you haven't told me much about the man himself."

"I was coming to that." Bodan took another pull of beer. "He is huge and must duck his head to walk
through that doorway. His hair is a dark blond and he wears it very short, inches above his shoulders. He
has a proper moustache, but he shaves the rest of his face every day with a strange knife that never goes
dull. Mostly, he wears ordinary clothes, but sometimes he dons garments of a thin, eldritch cut, with
hundreds of buttons, clasps, and closures. There's something odd about his boots, though I haven't heard
a good description of them."

"You mean you haven't seen him yourself?"