"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 1 - The Misenchanted Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

when drawn, a vengeance the old man did not wish to see.
Valder drove that idea back down; he had little choice but to trust the
hermit. He settled back against the hump of ground and was quickly asleep.


CHAPTER 4

His legs were stiff and cramped when he awoke; he unfolded them slowly,
then flexed them again, working out the stiffness as best he could. When he
felt up to it, he pushed himself up onto his battered feet and looked around.
The sun, he was appalled to discover, was halfway up the eastern sky; he
had not intended to sleep so long as that. He saw no sign of the old hermit.
He told himself that the wizard had probably gone off to fetch water or
food. He decided to wait for the old man's return so that he might say his
farewells before heading southward. With that resolved, his next concern was
breakfast. He glanced about casually.
The handful of crabs that had not been eaten the day before were gone;
Valder supposed they had served as the old man's breakfast. The broken jar was
also gone, which supported his theory that the hermit had gone after water. As
he continued to look, however, it gradually sank in that everything that might
be of use was gone. Nothing remained on the site of the destroyed hut but ash
and broken glass. The piles of salvaged magical paraphernalia had vanished
with their owner.
An automatic check told him that his sword was still securely in its
sheath on his belt; he was relieved by that.
He could not imagine how the old man could have cleared everything away
so completely, or where he might have gone with it all. Puzzled, he clambered
up the rim of the crater, wincing at the scratching of shards of glass against
his bare feet.
Runes were gouged into the ash in the center of the crater, showing black
against white. They were nothing magical, but merely a message in common
Ethsharitic runes.
"Found new place," they said. "Not returning. Good luck."
No signature was included, but one was hardly necessary under the
circumstances. Valder stared at the words for a moment, then shrugged. It
might be that the wizard was actually somewhere nearby and would return as
soon as Valder was gone, he thought, but if so it was none of his concern. The
hermit obviously wanted him to leave without further contact, and he saw no
reason to argue about it. He took a final look about, then marched southward
into the marsh.
He reached dry land without incident. By noon he could no longer see or
smell the salt marsh, though a faint whiff of the sea could still be detected
on the breeze from the west. Although he was eager to return to his comrades
in the south and get out of the wilderness, he stopped when the sun was at its
zenith and sat down abruptly on a moss-covered log.
His feet were blistered and would carry him no further without a rest;
the day's walk of a mere two or three hours was not so much responsible as was
the prior day's abuse and the lack of footwear. He had not taken the time to
rig any sort of substitute for the boots that had been burned to ash in the
wizard's hut, and his weight was distributed differently without them, putting