"Kerr, Katharine - Westlands 01 - A Time Of Exile v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

"There's no need for that yet," Wargal snapped.
"There never will be if I can help it," Aderyn said. "I'd be twice cursed before I'd let a man be killed for taking the freedom that the gods gave him. I think my magic might make us harder to find."
Both men smiled, reassured by Aderyn's lie. Although he could control his aura well enough to pass unnoticed and thus practically invisible, Aderyn couldn't make an entire village disappear.
For two days they went north, keeping to the rolling hills and making a bare twelve miles a day. The more Aderyn opened his mind to the omens, the more clearly he knew that they were being pursued. On the third night, he scried into a campfire and saw the rains of the old village, burned to the ground. Only a lord's warband would have destroyed it, and that warband would have to be blind to miss the trail of so many goats and people. He left the campfire and went to look for Ibretin, who was taking his turn at watching the goats out in the pasture.
"You've called me Wise One. Do you truly think I have magic?"
"I can only hope so. Wargal thinks so."
It was too dark under the starry sky to see Ibretin's face. Aderyn raised his hand and made the blue light gather in his fingers like a cool-burning torch. Ibretin gasped aloud and stepped back.
"Now you know instead of hoping. Listen, the men chasing you are close by. Sooner or later, they'll catch us. You offered to die to save your friends. How about helping me with a little scheme instead?"
At dawn on the morrow, while Wargal rounded up the villagers and got them moving north, Aderyn and Ibretin headed south. Although Aderyn rode, he had Ibretin walk, leading his pack mule as if they'd been traveling together for some time as servant and master. About an hour's ride brought them to the inevitable warband. They were just breaking their night's camp, the horses saddled and ready to ride, the men standing idly around waiting for their lord's orders. The lord himself, a tall young man in blue-and-gray-plaid brigga, with oak leaves embroidered as a blazon on his shirt, was kicking dirt over a dying campfire. When Aderyn and Ibretin came up, the men shouted, running to gather round them. Aderyn could see Ibretin shaking in terror.
"Oh, here," a man called out. "This peddler's found our flown chicken! Lord Degedd will reward you for this, my friend."
"Indeed?" Aderyn said. "Well, I'm not sure I want a reward."
With a signal to Ibretin to stay well back, Aderyn swung down from his horse just as Degedd came pushing his way through his men. Aderyn made a bow to him, which the lord acknowledged with a brief nod.
"I've indeed found your runaway bondsman, but I want to buy him from you, my lord. He's a useful man with a mule, and I need a servant."
Caught utterly off guard, Degedd stared for a moment, then blinked and rubbed his chin with his hand.
"I'm not sure I want to sell. I'd rather have the fun of taking the skin off his cursed back."
"That would be a most unwise pleasure."
"And who are you to tell me what to do?"
Since Aderyn was not very tall, the lord towered over him with six feet of solid muscle. Aderyn set his hands on his hips and looked up at him.
"Your men called me a peddler, but I'm nothing of the sort. I'm a herbman, traveling in your country, and one who knows the laws of the gods. Do you care to question me further?"
"I do. I don't give a pig's fart whether you're a learned man or not, and anyway, for all I know, you lie."
"Then let me give you a sample of my learning. Enslaving free men to work your land is an impious thing. The gods have decreed that only criminals and debtors shall be bondsmen. That law held for a thousand years, back in the Homeland, and it held for hundreds here, until greedy men like you chose to break it."
When his men began muttering, shamefaced among themselves at the truth of the herbman's words, the lord's face turned purple with rage. He drew his sword, the steel glittering in the sun.
"Hold your ugly lying tongue and give me back that bondsman! Be on your way or die right here, you scholarly swine!"
With a gentle smile, Aderyn raised his hand and called upon the spirits of fire. They came, bursting into manifestation with a roar and crackle of bright flame on the sword blade. Howling, Degedd struggled to hold on to the hilt, then cursed and flung the flesh-branding metal to the ground. Aderyn turned the flames to illusions and swung around, scattering bright but harmless blue fire into the warband. Yelling, shoving each other, they fell back and ran away to let their lord face Aderyn alone.
"Now then, I'll give you two copper pieces for him. That's a generous price, my lord."
His face dead white, Degedd tried to speak, failed, then simply nodded his agreement. Aderyn untied his coin pouch and counted the coppers into the lord's broad but shaking left hand, as the right seemed to pain him.
"Your chamberlain will doubtless think you've made a fine bargain. And, of course, if you and your men return straight to your lands, there's no need for anyone to ever hear this tale."
Degedd forced out a tight sour smile. Doubtless he didn't care to be mocked in every tavern in Eldidd by the story of how one herbman had bested him on the road, especially since no one would believe that the herbman had done it with magic. With a cheery wave, Aderyn mounted his horse and rode away, with Ibretin and the mule hurrying after. About a mile on, they looked back to see Lord Degedd and his warband trotting fast-away back south. Aderyn tested the dweomer warnings and felt that indeed, all danger was over. At that he laughed aloud.
"If nothing else," he told Ibretin, "that was the best jest I've had in a long time."
Ibretin tried to smile but burst into tears instead. He wept all the way back.
That night there was as much of a celebration in the camp as their meager provisions would alow. Aderyn sat at the biggest fire with Wargal and his wife while the rest of the villagers squatted close by and stared at him as if he were a god.
"We have to let the goats rest a day or they'll stop giving milk," Wargal said. "Is that safe, Wise One?"
"Oh, I think so. But you'd best travel a long ways north before you find a place to settle down."
"We intend to. We were hoping you'd come with us."
"I will for a while, but my destiny lies in the west, and I have to go where my magic tells me."
After three more days of slow, straggling marching, the luck of Wargal's tribe turned for the better. One afternoon they crested a high hill to see huts of their own kind spread out along a stream, prosperous fields, and pastures full of goats. When they came up to the village, the folk ran to meet them. There were only seven huts in the village, but land enough for many families. After a hasty tribal council, their headman, Ufel, told Wargal that he and his folk were welcome to settle there if they chose.
"The more of us, the better," Ufel said. "Our young men are learning a thing or two from the cursed Blue-eyes. Someday we'll fight and keep our lands."
Wargal tossed, back his head and howled a war cry.
Their journey over, the refugees camped that night along the streambank. The villagers brought food and settled, in for talks to get to know their new neighbors. At Ufel the headman's fire, Wargal and Aderyn drank thin beer from wooden cups.
"I take it your folk have lived here for some time," Aderyn said. "May you always live in peace."
"So I hope. We have a powerful god in our valley, and so far he's protected us. If you'd like, I'll show you his tree on the morrow."
"My thanks, I would." Aderyn had a cautious sip of the beer and found it suitably weak. "I don't suppose any of the Blue-eyes live near you?"
"They don't. And I pray that our god will always keep them away. Very few folk of any kind come through here-one of the People every now and then, that's all."
"The who?"
"The People. The Blue-eyes call them the Westfolk, but their own name for themselves is the People. We don't see many of them anymore. When I was a little child, they brought their horses through every now and then, but not recently. Probably the demon-spawn Blue-eyes have tried to enslave them, too, but I'm willing to bet that they found it a very hard job."
"From what I've heard, the Eldidd men have some kind of trade with them-iron goods for horses."
"Iron goods? The idiot Blue-eyes give the People iron?" Ufel rose and paced a few steps away from the fire. "Trouble and twice trouble over that, then!"
"What? I don't understand. The Westfolk seem to want the iron and . . . "
"I can't explain. For a Blue-eye you're a good man, but telling you would be breaking geis."
"Never would I ask you to do such a thing. I'll say no more about it."