"Robert Jordan - Conan The Indomitable" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

One

A man-high cairn marks the desolate juncture where the lands of Brythunia, Corinthia and Zamora come
together. Centuries of wind and rain and snow and sun have worked their hot and cold hands and
weathered claws over the pillar, smoothing it into little more than a soft-featured mound of stone rising
from the barren ground. The mountain upon which the cairn squats is most always covered with snow,
continually subjected to harsh storms, and it draws few visitors intent on seeing a geographical marker of
such plain visage.

Upon the narrow snowbound path that passes the cairn walked a man and a woman. Arguing.

"There were horses," the woman said, "but naturally, it never occurred to you to fetch a pair."

The speaker of these words was named Elashi, a beautiful young woman born of the Khauranian desert.
While lush of breast, she had the supple muscles and carriage developed by one familiar with hard work,
and her legs were firm and slim from much walking. She wore a heavy cloak over a woolen shirt and long
woolen skirt against the cold, and her feet were encased in high boots. A short, curved sword dangled
from a strap at her left hip.

"Most of the horses were either dead or about to be," her companion said, his voice dry. "Riding a dead
horse makes for slow going."

The man was also young, but certainly fully grown. He stood tall and wide-shouldered, with thickly
muscled arms and a deep, heavy chest. Clean-shaven, he wore his black hair in a square-cut mane, and
his blue eyes seemed to flash with a deep inner fire. Conan his name was, begotten of the fierce barbarian
mountain people from the cold lands of Cimmeria far to the north. He too wore a woolen shirt and
woolen pants under a winter's cloak and was shod in heavy boots, and the sheathed sword he carried
was long and straight, of ancient blued iron, its edges sharped like razors.

"A lot you know," Elashi continued. "I sometimes wonder what, if anything, you are good for, you great
barbarian lout!"

Conan shook his head. Since meeting Elashi at the temple of the Suddah Oblates, his life had certainly
been less than dull. They had taken up with a beautiful zombie woman, fought a necromancer's blind
priests and undead minions, and nearly been skewered a dozen times along the way. He and Elashi had
shared sleeping robes for much of the time, but despite that, she continued to harangue him at every
opportunity. It seemed that she never tired of extolling his faults, real or imagined.

Conan said, "I heard no complaints last night as the fire dwindled." He grinned widely at her.

After a few seconds, and seemingly against her will, Elashi returned Conan's grin. "Well, I suppose you
do ometimes rise to certain occasions." She was silent for half a dozen steps and then said, "But we
would have more energy for such alliances had we horses to ride."

"I noticed no lack of energy onmy part," Conan said. "And as long as we are wishing for that which we
do not have, why not wish for a kingdom and servants? Or perhaps a palace of gold?"

"Oh, you, you—barbarian lout!"

He grinned again as she fell silent. After the death of Neg the Malefic, the necromancer whom Conan