Lizardman

Начало книги

The lizardman, king of his domain, rode on air into the swamp and gnashed his teeth against the night.

He had a feeling in his bones. A mighty feeling. He was old and wise enough to know the power of such feelings. Tonight---yes, tonight---he would find the beast he sought. Out there amid the cypresses and on the mud flats, somewhere betwixt moonrise and dawn, the Old Pope waited for him, in robes of gnarled green. Tonight he would pay his respects to the Old Pope, that chawer of bones and spitter of flesh, and then he would sail his lasso around the Old Pope's throat and drive his gaffhook into the white bellyflesh to pierce a heart as tough as a cannonball.

The Lizardman chewed on his unlit cigar, the wind streaming his long white hair back from his leather-brown face, and powered the airboat over a sea of weeds. The light of a single battery lamp, mounted on the frame behind his seat, speared a direction for him, but he could have found his way in the dark. He knew the sounds of the swamp---the chirrs, croaks, and whispers---and he knew the smells of the swamp, the stale wet odors of earth caught between dry land and sea. The lizardman had navigated this place in drought and monsoon; he knew it as a man knows the feel of a well-worn shirt, but in all these many years the Old Pope had found a secret pocket and would not come out to play.

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