"Simon R. Green - Hawk and Fisher 3 - The God Killer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

Hawk was tall, dark, but no longer handsome. A series of old scars ran down the
right side of his face, and a black silk patch covered his right eye. He wore a long
furred jacket and trousers and a heavy black Guardsman's cloak. He didn't look
like much. He was lean and wiry rather than muscular, and he was beginning to
build a stomach. He wore his long dark hair swept back from his forehead and
tied with a silver clasp at the nape. He had only just turned thirty, but already
there were streaks of grey in his hair. It would have been easy to dismiss Hawk as
just another bravo, perhaps a little past his prime and going to seed, but there was
something about Hawk; something hard and unyielding and almost sinister.
People walked quietly around him, and were careful to keep their voices calm and
reasonable. On his right hip Hawk carried a short-handled axe instead of a sword.
He was very good with an axe. He'd had lots of practice in his five years as a
Guard.

Isobel Fisher walked at Hawk's side, echoing his pace and stance with the
naturalness of long companionship. She was tall, easily six feet in height, lithely
muscular, and her long blond hair fell to her waist in a single thick plait, weighted
at the tip with a polished steel ball. She was in her mid- to late-twenties, and
handsome rather than beautiful. There was a rawboned harshness to her face
which contrasted strongly with her deep blue eyes and generous mouth.
Somewhere in the past, something had scoured all the human weaknesses out of
her, and it showed. Like Hawk, she wore the Guard's standard uniform for winter,
with a sword at her left hip. Her hand rested comfortably on the pommel.

A thin mist hung about the street, though the weather wizards had been trying to
clear it for hours. The cold seeped relentlessly into Hawk's bones as he strode
along, and he stamped his boots hard into the slush to try and keep some warmth
in his feet. His hands were curled into fists inside his gloves, but it didn't seem to
be helping much. Hawk hated the cold, hated the way it leached all the warmth
and life out of him. And in particular, he hated being out in the cold and the dark

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at such an ungodly hour of the morning. But this shift paid the best, and he and
Fisher needed the money, so… Hawk shrugged irritably, trying to get his cloak to
fall more comfortably about him. He hated wearing a cloak; it always got in the
way during fights. But braving the winter cold without a cloak was about as
sensible as skinny-dipping in an alligator pool; you tended to lose important parts
of your anatomy. So Hawk wore his cloak, and moaned about it a lot. He
shrugged his shoulders again, and tugged surreptitiously at the cloak's hem.

"Leave that cloak alone," said Fisher, without looking at him. "It looks fine."

Hawk sniffed. "It doesn't feel right. The day's supposed to get warmer, anyway. If
the mists clear up, I think I might drop the cloak off somewhere and pick it up at
the end of the shift."

"You'll do no such thing. You know you get colds and flus easily, and I'm not