Кинг Стивен - Gunslinger
sf_fantasy Стивен Кинг Gunslinger Roland Deschain of Gilead knows he is obsessed over finding the Dark Tower, but does not care. He will follow the Man in Black wherever he goes and for how long it takes even into eternity until he catches this person, if he is a person, and force him to reveal the locale of the Dark Tower. If others die at his hands after meeting the Gunslinger so be it.
Currently he tracks his prey across a desert stopping at a way station where he meets a child whom he thought at first was his target, albeit two feet shorter. The kid is John "Jake" Chambers from 1977 New York City wherever in hell that place is. Shockingly to the solitary Deschain, instead of his usual killing or just another soul left behind, Roland allows Jake to accompany him on his trek towards the mountains, the Man in Black, and ultimately the Black Tower.
1982, Bangor, Maine en en Rustam FB Tools 2005-02-26 http://www.undernet.org irc.undernet.org #bookz BA00E397-AB6D-4F03-92AB-928E1E3AC410 1.0 FB2 Made by Rust
Stephen King
The Gunslinger
TO
ED FERMAN
who took a chance on these stories, one by one.
I
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what might have been parsecs in all directions. White; blinding; waterless; without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway and coaches had followed it.
The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.
The gunslinger walked stolidly, not hurrying, not loafing. A hide waterbag was slung around his middle like a bloated sausage. It was almost full. He had progressed through the khef over many years, and had reached the fifth level.
At the seventh or eighth, he would not have been thirsty; he could have watched own body dehydrate with clinical, detached attention, watering its crevices and dark inner hollows only when his logic told him it must be done. He was not seventh or eighth. He was fifth. So he was thirsty, although he had no particular urge to drink. In a vague way, all this pleased him.
It was romantic.
Below the waterbag were his guns, finely weighted to his hand. The two belts crisscrossed above his crotch. The holsters were oiled too deeply for even this Philistine sun to crack. The stocks of the guns were sandalwood, yellow and finely grained. The holsters were tied down with raw hide cord, and they swung heavily against his hips.
The brass casings of the cartridges looped into the gun belts twinkled and flashed and heliographed in the sun. The leather made subtle creaking noises. The guns themselves made no noise.
They had spilled blood. There was no need to make noise in the sterility of the desert
His clothes were the no-color of rain or dust. His shirt was open at the throat, with a rawhide thong dangling loosely in hand-punched eyelets. His pants were seam-stretched dungarees.
He breasted a gently rising dune (although there was no sand here; the desert was hardpan, and even the harsh winds that blew when dark came raised only an aggravating harsh dust like scouring powder) and saw the kicked remains of a tiny campfire on the lee side, the side which the sun would quit earliest. Small signs like this, once
