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

"I didn't know, Wise One, but truly, I never did trust the giver of it. A strange thing happened to me last night."
When Dallandra started to tell the story, Nananna was all attention, but in a bit her mind seemed to drift away. She ran slow fingers over the polished shaft, then let it fall from her lap.
"Well, child, this puzzle is yours, not mine," she said at last. "I . . . I know nothing of these things."
The fear turned to a presence, cold and menacing behind her, as if a murderer had crept into the tent.
"Well, it probably doesn't mean much." Dallandra forced herself to sound brisk and cheerful. "Would you like some porridge? Namydd the merchant brought us some nice Eldidd oats the last time he came."
Later, when she was alone, Dallandra wept for hours.

Just north of Cannobaen, Halaberiel's warband crossed a shallow stream with no name (although it was known the Badger in later years) which should have marked the limits of Eldidd territory, or so the prince told Aderyn, even though some twenty-odd miles west stood the dun and farms of the treaty-breakers' holding. Aderyn, however, never saw that dun, because they turned north, heading for the forest edge, long before they reached it. By then Aderyn was exhausted, riding wounded and worried for long hours as Halaberiel pushed both his men and his horses hard. Tree meadow, rock and road-they all blurred together into the endless ache of that long ride. Finally they reached a camp, though not Nananna's, and Aderyn was bundled off to a tent to sleep on leather cushions while the prince talked with the leaders of the various alarli.
In the morning when they rode out, twenty more warriors came with them and a herd of extra horses, too. Aderyn was shocked when he realized that some of those warriors were women. At noon that day they met up with a single alar, heading south, which donated six fighting men, three women archers, and a horse laden with arrows. At sunset, they rode into Nananna's camp to find it huge. Other dweomermasters had heard Nananna's call for help and sent their people, among them sixty warriors with spare horses and weapons both. After all, Halaberiel remarked, they were going to need every sword they could get.
"Our longbows are just hunting weapons. I don't imagine they'll be much good against Eldidd armor. I don't know, of course-we've never tried it."
"Ah." Aderyn tried to nod sagaciously, then fainted dead away.
He woke to find himself lying on his back on a spread of cushions in Halaberiel's enormous tent. Dweomer light shimmered near the smoke hole. At first he thought his injured hand was bleeding badly; then he realized that it was draped into a wooden bowl of warm herb water to soak. When someone knelt beside him he turned his head to find, Dallandra, her beautiful eyes all grave concern. He thought that all his pain was well worth it, just to see her worried about him.
"That rotten Round-ear chirurgeon did a clumsy enough job on your hand," she snapped. "We're just lucky that the humors haven't turned foul."
"Well, I didn't exactly follow his orders. Ye gods, my mouth! Is there water?"
She handed him a wooden cup of spring water and watched while he drank it all, then refilled it from a skin lying nearby.
"How do you feel, other than your hand?"
"A little tired, but I'll be all right. It's just that the beastly thing aches so much."
She got up and moved round to lift his hand out of the water and dry it off on a scrap of clean cloth. Her touch was so light that he felt no pain, not even in his splinted fingers.
"I've gotten the bindings wet," she remarked, "so they'll shrink as they dry and pull the splints tighter." With a little frown she laid her hand on his and stared at the splints, her lips a little parted in hard thought. The pain seemed to run out of the wounds like spilled water. "There. Better?"
"Much! My thanks, truly, a thousand times over."
"When it starts hurting again, come to me and I'll do it again." Gently she laid the hand down on a cushion and picked up the bowl of filthy herb water. "I'll just throw this away."
As she left, Aderyn heard her speak with someone; in a moment Halaberiel came in. The prince had traded his fine clothes for a pair of tight leather trousers, a plain shirt, and a heavy leather jerkin that looked as if it would turn a blade or two.
"Dallandra says you'll recover. I'm glad to hear it."
"My thanks, Banadar. I hear a lot of noise outside. Have more men ridden in?"
"Fifteen, that's all. But we've got a good-sized warband now, and we may pick up a few more as we ride north. I imagine Melaudd's scraping up every man he can, too. I've sent a scouting party ahead to the lake. The rest of us will leave tomorrow."
"I'll come with you."
"Are you sure? There's no need . . . "
"There is. I'm a herbman, aren't I? If things come to battle, you'll need me more than five swords."
"Done then, and my thanks."
As it turned out, Aderyn wasn't the only healer and dweomermaster who insisted on riding with the army. That night, when Dallandra came in to tend his wounds again, she was close to tears.
"What's so wrong?" Aderyn said.
"Nananna. She's coming with you to the Lake of the Leaping Trout."
"What? It's going to be a forced march. She'll get exhausted."
"She's exhausted already. It's time. She's going to die."
Dallandra wept, her face running tears while her whole body shook in silent grief. When Aderyn scrambled to his feet and flung his good arm around her in a clumsy attempt to comfort her, she pulled away.
"It's wrong of me to weep like this. It's her time, and that's that." She busied herself in wiping her face on her sleeve. "I should accept it and be done with it."
"Easy to say. Not so easy to do."
She nodded a distracted agreement
"Are you coming with her?" Aderyn said. "And us, I mean?"
"Of course. Do you think I'd let her go alone?" She turned on him with an expression so fierce that he stepped back. "Oh, I'm sorry I snapped at you. I'm all to pieces over this."
"As well you might be. It's all right. I was just worried about her."
"So am I. I'm bringing Enabrilia along, too, to help me tend her. She's sending the baby and her man off with the others. I'm sorry. Ado. I meant to tell you, earlier."
He hugged it to himself like a treasure: she'd used his nickname, just casually, as if they'd known each other a good long time.
During the long, hard march to the lake, Aderyn traveled at the rear of the line with the two elven women. Thanks to Dallandra's healing dweomer, his wounded hand bothered him hardly at all, but even if it had pained him, he would have ignored it in his concern for Nananna. Often he wondered if the old woman would live to reach the burial ground. In the mornings she mounted her horse easily enough, but after a few hours her energy would ebb, and she would ride hunched over, clinging to the saddle with both hands, her frail fingers like the talons of some ancient bird, gripping its perch in a desperate fear of falling. By their late camps she would be unable to dismount-Aderyn and Dallandra would lift her down from her horse and carry her like a child to her blankets. Since she could barely eat, she grew lighter every day, all bone and sheer will.
"I'll live long enough to see the death-ground," she would say, "Don't fuss over me, children."
In the end, she was right. Just at noon on a late autumn day, warm and hazy with false summer, Halaberiel led his army- because an army of some two hundred warriors it was by then-up a low grassy rise. Riding in the rear, Aderyn heard sudden yells. Since he couldn't understand the words, he thought the men in the van were seeing the enemy, drawn up and ready for them.
"Stay here with Nananna!" he yelled at Dallandra.
He turned his horse out of line and rode hard, heading for the head of the line. As he rode, the shouts resolved themselves, then spread down the line of march: dal-en! dal-en! the lake! the lake! Just at the crest of the rise Aderyn came up to Halaberiel, who was calling for a temporary halt. Far down the green slope lay the silver lake, a long finger of water caught in a narrow valley pointing southeast to northwest. To the north a thick forest spread along the valley floor, the dark pines standing in such orderly rows that obviously they were no natural growth. Halaberiel waved his hand in their direction.
"The death-ground. And the trees of my ancestors."
They set up camp that afternoon between the forest and the north shore of the lake in a grassy meadow clearly planned as a campground: there were stone fire pits at regular intervals and small sheds, too, for keeping firewood dry and food safe from prowling animals. After he helped Dallandra make camp-as best he could with his clumsy broken hand-Aderyn joined the council of war, consisting of Halaberiel and ten other elves, hastily elected squad leaders and temporary captains. For over an hour they argued strategy in Elvish while Aderyn tried to pick out the few words he knew; eventually he gave it up and drowsed. After the council disbanded, some of the men from the banadar's personal warband joined them and, out of deference to the dweomerman, spoke in Deverrian. After more talk of arrows, Calonderiel said something so odd that it caught Aderyn's attention.