"Michael Scott Rohan - Chase the Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rohan Michael Scott)

Stephen? Myrko, this here's Steve, he pulled some Wolves off my back and
stopped a knock or two while he was about it. Needs something to set him up.
Katjka! You're in demand! And bring your puncture repair kit! Now, me old
mate, just you sit down there ...' I slumped onto a high-backed wooden settle,
trying hard not to jolt my head or my arm, and stared around at the room. I'd
seen touristy Greek bars trying for this kind of look. Now I realized what
they'd been imitating. Here, though, the bunches of dried herbs and sausages
dangling from the rafters, hams in sacking, huge slabs of salt cod, octopi
looking like mummified hands, bloat-bellied wine-flasks with crude labels of
dancing peasants, and shapes less identifiable, weren't plastic; their
fragrance hung heavy on the air, and the faintly trembling light of the
lanterns that hung between them gave their shadows a strange animation. They
were real lanterns, oil lanterns; you could smell them, too. I glanced around,
and saw no sign of switches or power points anywhere on the walls; and come to
that, the outside lights had been lanterns too. Their light was strictly
local, and bright only in the centre of the room; the tables there were empty,
but from the more shadowed ones in the corners I could hear the low buzz of
voices, male and female, and the music of glasses and cutlery well wielded.
A tray clattered on the table in front of me, a bottle full of some pale
liquid and a little narrow-necked flask of the same, no glass. A squat,
rounded little man with the face of an amiable toad leaned over me and
grunted. 'On the house, friend! Anyone who takes a crack at Volfes does us all
a favourrr!' He had an accent as heavy as the spices in the air, heavy and
guttural. There was a rumble of agreement from the shadowy depths of the room,
and I was astonished to see the glint of glasses being lifted.
'You should've seen him, Myrko!' enthused Jyp. 'They'd got me down, got
my little sticker away, and he comes for 'em with a goddamn great iron bar!
Three of 'em, and he fells two, the third gets a crack in before I get my
blade back and open him up a bit! Went for 'em bald-headed, he did, just like
that!'
Myrko nodded soberly. 'Wish I had ssseen it! That was bravely done, my
lad. Now get that down you, it's for drrrinking, isn't it? Sovereign
rrremedy!' I grasped the little flask gingerly, and tilted it to my lips.
There was a trick to the shape of it; it shot the whole lot at the back of my
throat. If you want to know what It felt like, tie a plum to a rocket and fire
it down your gullet, preferably during an earthquake. I breathed out heavily,
expecting to see the air glow, and Myrko poured me another while the flask was
still in my hand. Suddenly the chill inside me lessened, my shivering stopped;
I felt the blood pulsating in my veins, and the pounding in my head became
bearable. I downed the second flaskful, and let him fill another before I held
the bottle to see the label. 'Tujika,' I said, with sudden understanding.
'Slivovitz. But about three times as strong as any I've tasted before!'
Myrko grinned, looking ready to catch a fly any moment. 'Shliwowitch,
yess, if that's what you want to call it. Rrreal upland stuff, best this side
of the Karrpatny. Hoi, here's Katjka!' I blinked. Out of the aromatic gloom a
girl appeared - quite a girl. In that gaudy costume she went with the decor of
the place; she might have stepped down off one of the wine labels, a
picturebook peasant girl from somewhere on the upper Danube. Perhaps not a
girl; a second glance put her in her late twenties. And perhaps not a peasant
either; the embroidery on the flared red skirt and black stomacher was just