"Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time 02 - The Great Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

sword drift toward his chest. There was nothing slow or soft about the impact. His ribs creaked as if he
had been struck with a hammer. He grunted, but the wind would not allow him to give way; it still carried
him forward, instead. The lathes of Lan's practice sword flexed and bent — ever so slowly, it seemed to
Rand — then shattered, sharp points oozing toward his heart, jagged lathes piercing his skin. Pain lanced
through his body; his whole skin felt slashed. He burned as though the sun had flared to crisp him like
bacon in a pan.

With a shout, he threw himself stumbling back, falling against the stone wall. Hand trembling, he touched
the gashes on his chest and raised bloody fingers before his gray eyes in disbelief.

"And what was that fool move, sheepherder?" Lan grated. "You know better by now, or should unless
you have forgotten everything I've tried to teach you. How badly are you — ?" He cut off as Rand
looked up at him.

"The wind." Rand's mouth was dry. "It — it pushed me! It . . . It was solid as a wall!"

The Warder stared at him in silence, then offered a hand. Rand took it and let himself be pulled to his
feet.

"Strange things can happen this close to the Blight," Lan said finally, but for all the flatness of the words
he sounded troubled. That in itself was strange. Warders, those half-legendary warriors who served the
Aes Sedai, seldom showed emotion, and Lan showed little even for a Warder. He tossed the shattered
lathe sword aside and leaned against the wall where their real swords lay, out of the way of their practice.

"Not like that," Rand protested. He joined the other man, squatting with his back against the stone. That
way the top of the wall was higher than his head, protection of a kind from the wind. If it was a wind. No
wind had ever felt . . . solid . . . like that. "Peace! Maybe not evenin the Blight."

"For someone like you .. . ." Lan shrugged as if that explained everything. "How long before you leave,
sheepherder? A month since you said you were going, and I thought you'd be three weeks gone by
now."

Rand stared up at him in surprise.He's acting like nothing happened! Frowning, he set down the
practice sword and lifted his real sword to his knees, fingers running along the long, leather-wrapped hilt
inset with a bronze heron. Another bronze heron stood on the scabbard, and yet another was scribed on
the sheathed blade. It was still a little strange to him that he had a sword. Any sword, much less one with
a blademaster's mark. He was a farmer from the Two Rivers, so far away, now. Maybe far away
forever, now. He was a shepherd like his father —I wasa shepherd. What am I now? — and his father
had given him a heron-marked sword.Tam ismy father, no matter what anybody says . He wished his
own thoughts did not sound as if he was trying to convince himself.

Again Lan seemed to read his mind. "In the Borderlands, sheepherder, if a man has the raising of a child,
that child is his, and none can say different."

Scowling, Rand ignored the Warder's words. It was no one's business but his own. "I want to learn how
to use this. I need to." It had caused him problems, carrying a heron-marked sword. Not everybody
knew what it meant, or even noticed it, but even so a heron-mark blade, especially in the hands of a