"Kerr, Katharine - Deverry 02 - Darkspell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

The deliberate brutality forced Dolyan silent. . ‘Good,’ Gweniver said. ‘Now hurry, all of you!’
She followed the others as they puffed up the spiral staircase, but she went to her brother’s chamber, not her own. From the carved chest beside his bed she got a pair of his old brigga and one of his shirts. Changing into his clothes brought her a scatter of tears - she’d been fond of Avoic, who was only fourteen - but there was no time for mourning. She belted on his second-best sword and an old dagger. Although she was far from being a trained warrior, her brothers had taught her how to handle a sword, simply because in those days one never knew when a woman would have to swing one in her own defense. Finally she unclasped her long blond hair and cut it off short with the dagger. At night she would look enough like a man to give any lone marauder pause about attacking her party on the road.
Since they had over thirty miles to go to reach safety, Gweniver bullied the other women into riding fast, trotting, and occasionally galloping in short bursts. Every now and then, she would turn in her saddle and scan the road for the dust cloud that would mean death chasing them. Shortly after sunset, the full moon rose to shed her holy light to guide them. By then, her mother was swaying in the saddle with exhaustion. Gweniver saw a copse of alders off to one side of the road and led the others there for a brief rest. Dolyan and Mab had to be helped down from their saddles.
Gweniver walked back to the road to stand guard. Far away on the horizon, in the direction from which they’d come, a golden glow flared like the rising of a tiny moon. It was most likely the dun burning. She drew her sword and clutched the hilt while she stared unthinking at the glare. Suddenly she heard hoofbeats and saw a rider galloping down the road. Behind her in the copse the horses nickered a greeting, unknowing traitors.
‘Mount!’ she screamed. ‘Get ready to ride!’
The rider pulled up, then dismounted and drew his sword. As he strode toward her, she saw his bronze cloak pin glittering in the moonlight: a Boarsman.
‘And who are you, lad?’ he said.
Gweniver dropped to a fighting crouch.
‘A page of the Wolf from your silence. And what are you guarding so faithfully? I hate to kill a slip of a lad like you, but orders are orders, so come now, turn the ladies over to me.’
In utter desperation Gweniver lunged and struck. Taken offguard, the Boarsman slipped, his sword swinging up wildly. She cut again and sliced him hard on one side of his neck, then struck back on the other, just as her older brother Benoic had taught her. With a moan of disbelief, the Boarsman buckled to his knees and died at her feet. Gweniver nearly vomited. In the moonlight the sword blade was dark wet with blood, not shiny clean like in the practice sessions. Her mother’s shriek of terror brought her back to her senses. She ran for the Boars-man’s horse, grabbed the reins just as it was about to bolt, then led it back to the copse.
‘That ever it would come to this!’ Mab sobbed. “That a lass I tended would be forced to turn warrior on the roads! Oh holy gods all, when will you have mercy on the kingdom?’
‘When it suits them and not a minute before,’ Gweniver said. ‘Now get on those horses! We’ve got to get out of here.’
Deep in the middle of the night, they reached the Temple of the Moon, which sat at the top of a hill with a good stone wall around its compound. Along with his friends and vassals, Gweniver’s father had given the coin to build the wall, a far-sighted generosity on his part that was now saving his wife and daughters. If any battle-drunk warrior were insane enough to break geis and risk the Goddess’s wrath by demanding entry, the wall would keep him out until he’d come to his senses. At the gates, Gweniver screamed and yelled and kept it up until at last she heard a frightened voice call back that its owner was on the way. A priestess draped in a shawl yanked the gates open a bare crack, then shoved them wider when she saw Dolyan.
‘Oh my lady, has the worst come upon your clan?’
‘It has. Will you shelter us?’
‘Gladly, but I don’t know what to do about this lad with you.’
‘It’s only Gwen in her brother’s clothes,’ Gweniver broke in. ‘I thought we’d best pretend to have a man with us.’
‘Well and good, then,’ the priestess said with a nervous laugh. ‘Now ride in quickly, all of you.’
Dark and shadowed in the moonlight, the vast temple compound was crowded with buildings, some of stone, others hastily thrown together out of wood. Priestesses with cloaks thrown over their nightdresses clustered around the refugees and helped the older women dismount in a chatter of soothing whispers. Some took the horses to the stables; others led Gweniver and her party to the long wooden guest house. Once an elegant place for visiting noblewomen, it was now crowded with cots and chests, because women of all ranks were sheltering there. The blood feud that had reduced the Wolf clan to three women was only one thread in a hideous tapestry of civil war.
By the light of a candle lantern the priestesses found the newest arrivals empty cots in a corner. In the midst of the whispers and confusion, Gweniver lay down on the nearest one and fell asleep, boots, sword belt, and all.
She woke to find a silent, empty dormitory flooded with light from the narrow windows near the roof. She’d come to this temple so often that for a moment she was confused: was she here to pray about her vocation or to represent her clan at the harvest rite? Then the memory came back, sharp as a sword thrust.
‘Avoic,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Avoic!’
Yet no tears came, and she realized that she was hungry. Sore and stretching, she got up and wandered through a doorway at the end of the dormitory into the refectory, a narrow room crammed with tables for desperate guests. A neophyte in a white dress kirtled with green screamed aloud.
‘My apologies, Gwen,’ she said, laughing. ‘I thought you were a lad for a moment. Sit down, and I’ll fetch you porridge.’
Gweniver unbuckled the sword belt and slung it on the table next to her as she sat down. She ran one finger down Avoic’s second-best scabbard, which was chaped in tarnished silver and inlaid with spirals and interlaced wolves. By all rights under the law, she was the head of the Wolf clan now, but she doubted if she could ever claim her position. For her to inherit in the female line she would have to overcome more obstacles than Tieryn Burcan of the Boar.
In a few minutes Ardda, high priestess of the temple, came in to sit beside her. Although she was close to sixty, with gray hair and web of lines around her eyes, Ardda’s step and carriage were as lithe as a young lass’s.
‘Well, Gwen,’ she said. ‘You’ve been telling me for years that you want to be a priestess. Has the time come upon you now or not?’
‘I don’t know, my lady. You know that I’ve always had doubts about my calling . . . well, if I have any choice in the matter now.’
‘Don’t forget that you’ve got the Wolf lands for a dowry. When the news spreads, I’ll wager that many a man among your father’s allies will want to come fetch you out.’
‘But oh ye gods, I’ve never wanted to marry!’
With a little sigh, Ardda unconsciously reached up and touched her right cheek, which was covered with the blue tattoo of the crescent moon. Any man who touched in lust a woman with that mark was put to death. Not only the noble lords, but any freeborn man would have slain the defiler, because if the Goddess were wrathful, the crops would fail and no man ever sire a son again.
‘You’d have to marry to keep the Wolf lands,’ Ardda remarked.
‘It’s not that I want the lands. I want to keep my clan alive, and there’s my sister. If I swore to the Goddess, then the right of inheritance would pass to Maccy. She always had lots of suitors, even when she only had a small dowry.’
‘But could she rule the clan?’
‘Of course not, but if I pick her the right husband - oh, listen to me! How am I going to get to the King to lay my petition? I’ll wager that the Boar’s riding this way right now to make sure we’re penned here like hogs.’
Her prediction came true not an hour later. Gweniver was restlessly pacing round and round the grounds when she heard the sound of many men and horses riding their way. As she ran toward the gates, priestesses joined her, yelling at the gatekeeper to close them up. Gweniver was just helping slam the iron bar into the staples when the horsemen arrived in a clatter of hooves and jingle of mail. Ardda was already up on the catwalk over the gates. Trembling with rage, Gweniver climbed up’ and joined her.
Down below, milling around a respectful twenty yards away, was the seventy-man warband of the Boar. Burcan himself edged his horse out of the mob and insolently rode right up to the gates. A man in his late thirties, he had a thick streak of gray in his raven-dark hair and heavy mustache. As she leaned onto the rampart, Gweniver hated him, the man who had killed her clan.
‘What do you want?’ Ardda called out. ‘To approach the Holy Moon ready for war is an insult to the Goddess.’
‘No insult meant, Your Holiness,’ he called back in his dark, gravelly voice. ‘It’s only that I rode in haste. I see that Lady Gweniver is safe here with you.’
‘And safe she’ll remain, unless you want the Goddess to curse your lands into barrenness.’
‘What kind of a man do you think I am, to violate the holy sanctuary? I came to make the lady an offer of peace.’ He turned in the saddle to look up at Gweniver. ‘Many a blood feud’s ended with a wedding, my lady. Take my second son for your man and rule the Wolf lands in the name of the Boar.’
‘I’d never let kin to you lay one filthy finger on me, you bastard!’ Gweniver yelled at the top of her lungs. ‘And what do you expect me to do, follow that false king you serve?’
Burcan’s broad face flushed in rage.
‘I make you a vow,’ he snarled. ‘If my son doesn’t have you, then no man will, and that goes for your sister, too. I’ll cursed well claim your land by right of blood feud if I have to.’
‘You forget yourself, my lord!’ Ardda snapped. ‘I forbid you to remain on temple land for another minute. Take your men away and make no more threats to one who worships the Goddess!’
Burcan hesitated, then shrugged and turned his horse away. Yelling orders, he collected his men and withdrew to the public road at the foot of the hill. Gweniver clenched her fists so hard that they ached as the warband spread out in the meadow on the far side of the road, technically off the demesne that supported the temple but in a perfect position to guard it.
‘They can’t stay there forever,’ Ardda said. ‘They’ll have to go to Dun Deverry soon to fulfill their obligation to their king.’
‘True spoken, but I’ll wager they stay there as long as they can.’
Leaning back against the rampart, Ardda sighed. Suddenly she looked very old, and very weary.
The civil wars had come about in this wise. Twenty-four years past, the High King died without a male heir, and his daughter, a sickly young lass, died soon after. Each of his three sisters, however, had sons by their high-ranking husbands, Gwerbret Cerrmor, Gwerbret Cantrae, and the Marked Prince of the kingdom of Eldidd. By law, the throne should have passed to the son of the eldest sister, married to Cantrae, but the gwerbret was heavily suspected of having poisoned the King and princess both to get at the throne. Gwerbret Cerrmor worked that suspicion to claim the throne for his son, and then the prince of Eldidd laid a further claim on the basis of his son’s doubly royal blood. Since Gweniver’s father never would have declared for a foreigner from Eldidd, the Wolf clan’s choice was made when the long-hated Boars supported the Cantrae claim.