"Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 03 - The Dragon on the Border" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Sir Herrac de Mer.”

He had not sat down himself; and, next to his father, he looked like a midget.

Herrac de Mer was at least six feet six and muscled in proportion. His face was square and
heavy-boned, with close cropped black hair tinged with gray. His shoulders were a good hand span on
either side wider than those of Dafydd, which were by no means narrow shoulders.

His face had borne a frown at first, seeing strangers already seated at the top table. But the frown
evaporated at the words of Giles’s introduction.

“Sit! Sit!” he said waving them back down, for they had all gotten automatically to their feet at his
entrance. “-Yes, you too, Giles, if they are friends of yours-“

“Thank you, Father!” Giles slipped eagerly onto a bench several seats away from the rest of them. It
was clear that while a seat at the high table might be his by right, not only as a knight but as a member of
the family, he could not sit in his father’s presence without his father’s permission.

The rest sat down as well.
“Father,” said Giles, “the gentleman closest to you is Sir James Eckert, Baron de Malencontri et
Riveroak, and just beyond him is Sir Brian Neville-Smythe. After Sir Brian, is Master Dafydd ap
Hywel-the like of whom, I swear, there is none-as far as men of the longbow are concerned.”

“Thank you,” murmured Dafydd, “but indeed it is also that no crossbowman has ever outshot me, either,
as to distance or target.”

Herrac’s black eyebrows, which had been shadowed slightly in a frown above his deep-set seal-black
eyes, on seeing a seated man in a leather jerkin, abruptly smiled. He was naturally not used to entertaining
an archer at his high table. But, of course, this archer was different.

“I had heard of you all before Giles told me about you,” he said. He had a resonant bass voice that came
rumbling softly out from deep within him. “The Ballad of the Loathly Tower has been sung even in this
hall, good sirs-and you, Master archer. You are all welcome. My hospitality is yours for as long as you
wish. What brings you?”

And he sat down himself at the table with them.

He was not only tall; but he was one of those men who, like Dafydd, kept his back as straight as an
arrow. So, if anything, he seemed to tower even more over them at the table than he had standing up.

Dafydd and Brian waited. It was obviously Jim’s position as the ranking member of the three to be first
in answering the question.

“We came to bring your family the story of Giles’s death,” said Jim. “Both Sir Brian and I saw him take
to the water-“

This was a delicate way of putting it. He was not sure whether Sir Herrac would have approved of his
son letting others know about his silkie blood. But certainly the other could read between the words on a
statement like that. Jim went on.