"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 2 - With a Single Spell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

hiss of the surf. An open boat, he imagined, would be too crowded and too
unsteady a place.
They might return at any moment, though. Hurriedly, he shoved the boat
down into the water. The keel scraped heavily over the sand, then floated free
on an incoming wave. Tobas pushed it out until he stood knee-deep in the surf,
then grabbed the gunwale and steadied it.
He was just clambering in when a bearded, black-haired head appeared
above the dune where the footprints had led.
"Hey!" the man called, plainly upset by what he saw.
The woman's head appeared beside him.
Tobas ignored them both and yanked the oars from their stowage. "Hey,
that's our boat!" the man called. He was clambering up the dune now, tugging
his sandy tunic into place.
Tobas got the oars into the oarlocks, splashed their blades into the
water, leaned forward, and pulled, refusing to worry about any damage he might
do if the oar blades caught on rocks hidden in the sand.
The boat slewed out into the water, and Tobas pulled harder on one side,
turning the bow out to sea. Each stroke moved him visibly farther from shore;
the bottom dropped off quickly, so that, by the third or fourth pull, the oars
were no longer in danger of striking sand.
"Come back!" the woman cried, running down the beach toward him. "Come
back with our boat!"
Tobas found himself facing her as the boat swung around. He smiled at her
as she stopped at the water's edge, already several yards away; she was very
young, surely not yet eighteen, perhaps younger than himself, and handsome
despite her rumpled brown hair and sandy, disheveled skirt and tunic.
"I'm sorry," he called out. "But it's an emergency. I'll bring it back if
I can!" A twinge of guilt struck him. Teasing young lovers was a long-standing
tradition in Telven, but stealing their boat might have serious consequences.
"Listen," he called. "If you go a mile west, then a league due north, you'll
reach the village of Telven; they'll help you there! Tell them T--" He
stopped, hesitant to give his right name, but then shrugged and went on. "Tell
them Tobas the apprentice wizard sent you!"
"But... our boat!" the woman cried, ankle-deep in the foaming water. The
man stood beside her, knuckles on his hips, glaring silently at Tobas'
receding figure.
"I'm sorry," Tobas repeated, "but I need it more than you do!" That said,
he devoted his entire attention to rowing and paid no more attention to the
boat's rightful owners. He had a ship to catch.


CHAPTER 4

What little wind there was came from the northeast, helping Tobas along
and hindering the ship he sought to intercept. He quickly found himself well
out at sea, the coastline a vague blur in the distance. He glanced back over
his shoulder and caught sight of the sail, far off his starboard bow; the ship
was still hull-down on the horizon.
He looked back at the fading land again, and his nerve failed him. If the
wind shifted, or if the ship decided to gain more sea room by running south,