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

Late on a summer afternoon, Nevyn and his guard rode to the top of a rise and saw Cannobaen spread out along the little stream called Y Brog. At the sight of the round, thatched houses, Maer broke into a wide grin.
"Ale tonight with supper, my lord. Or do they even have a tavern in this hole?"
"They did the last time I was here. But that was a long time ago."
At a hundred families, mostly of farmers or fishermen, Cannobaen was about twice as big as Nevyn had been remembering it. There was a good-sized proper inn on the old site o fthe small tavern. After he rented a chamber, Nevyn ordered ale and a meal for himself and stood the silver dagger to one last dinner, too. The innkeep, a stout fellow named Ewsn, hovered nearby.
"Do you get much trade through here?" Nevyn said, mostly to be polite.
"We've got a merchant in our town who buys and sells off in the west-with those tribes with the strange-sounding names. Men from Aberwyn come through every now and then to buy the horses he brings back." He hesitated, sucking stumps of teeth. "Be you a herbman, sir? My wife has this pain in her joints, you see, and so I was wondering."
"I am at that. In the morning I'll be glad to have a talk with her if she'd like."
The morning, however, apparently wasn't good enough for the innkeep's wife, Samwna. While she served Nevyn and Maer their dinner, Samwna also treated them to a long recital of symptoms as well rehearsed as a bard's performance. While they ate roast beef and turnips, they heard all about the mysterious pain in her joints, strange aches in the small of her back, and night sweats, sometimes hot, sometimes cold. With the apple tart, they heard about headaches and odd moments when she felt quite dizzy.
"It's all related to your woman's change of life," Nevyn said. "I've got soothing herbs that should help a good deal."
Maer went scarlet and almost choked.
"My most humble thanks." Samwna made him a little curtsy. "I've been wondering and wondering, I have. Here, you're not thinking of settling in our town, are you, good sir? It's been years and years since there's been a herbman in our neighborhood."
"As a matter of fact, I am. I'm getting too old to wander the roads, and I want a nice quiet place to settle down."
"Oh, towns don't come much quieter than Cannobaen!" Samwna paused to laugh. "Why, the big excitement lately was when one of Lord Pertyc's boarhounds killed two chickens over at Myna's farm."
Nevyn smiled, well pleased. Idly he rubbed the front of his shirt and touched the opal hidden inside. If there's trouble, he thought, it can cursed well stay in Aberwyn! No doubt remote Cannobaen would be undisturbed by these rumors of rebellion.

"By every hell, how can you be so stubborn?"
"It comes with my family title." Pertyc Maelwaedd touched the device on his shirt. "We're Badgers, my friend. We hold on."
"By that line of thinking, we Bears should have to stay in holes." Danry, Tieryn Cernmeton and Pertyc's closest friend, perched on the edge of a carved table and considered him. "But cursed if I will."
"Why do you think I nicknamed you the Falcon, back when we were lads? But this time you're flying too high."
They were sequestered in Pertyc's small study behind a barred door, and a good thing, too, because Danry was talking treason. Since Pertyc had a taste for clutter, the room was crowded: a large writing table, a shelf with twenty leather-bound codices, two chairs, a scatter of small Bardek carpets, and on the wall, a pair of moth-eaten stag's heads, trophies of some long-forgotten hunt of a remote ancestor. Pertyc's helm perched jauntily on the antlers of the largest stag, and his shield was propped up against a book-laden lectern carved with intertwined dogs and badgers.
"I've always liked my demesne," Pertyc remarked absently. "So remote here on the border. Nice and quiet. Easy to stay out of trouble in a place like Cannobaen."
"You can't stay out of this. That's what you don't understand."
"Indeed? Just watch."
Danry sighed again. He was a tall man, with a florid face that usually simmered on the edge of rage, and thick blond mustaches that were usually damp with mead. Lately, however, Danry had been withdrawn, and the mustaches had a ratty look, as if he'd been chewing on them in hard thought. Pertyc had been wondering what was on his friend's mind. Now he was finally hearing. Ever since the forced joining of the two kingdoms some sixty years before, there'd been plenty of grumbling in Eldidd, a longing for independence and past glory simmering like porridge over a slow fire. Now the fire had flared up; the porridge was beginning to boil over.
"I'd hoped to come around to this slowly," Danry said at last. "But it's hard to believe you'd be too blind to see the ale in your own tankard."
"I've never much liked sour ale. What does it matter to me if I pledge to a new king or an old one?"
"Perro! It's the honor of the thing."
"How are you going to have a rebellion without a king to rally round? Or have you ferretted out some obscure heir?"
"That's a rotten way to speak about him, but we have." Danry picked up a leather dog collar from the cluttered writing desk and began fiddling with the brass buckles. "The lad is related to the old blood royal twice over on the female line, and there's a lass who's related on the male line. If we marry them, well, it's claim enough. They're both good Eldidd blood, and that's the true thing." He ran the end of the collar through the buckle and pulled it tight. "You know, my friend, your claim to the throne is as good as his."
"It's not! I don't have a claim at all. None, do you hear me? My most honorable ancestor abdicated; I'm descended from his common-born wife, and that's that! No priest in the kingdom would back a claim on my part, and you know it."
"There are ways of handling priests." Danry tossed the collar aside. "But you're right, no doubt. I was just thinking of a thing or two."
"Listen, even jackals pull down the kill before they start squabbling over the meat."
Danry winced.
"When I came to my manhood," Pertyc went on, "I swore an oath to King Aeryc to serve him well, serve him faithfully, and put his life above my own. Seems to me I heard you and the rest of our friends swear one like it, too."
"Ah, by the hells! No oath is binding when it's sworn under coercion."
"No one held a sword to my throat. I didn't see one at yours, either."
With a curse, Danry heaved himself up from the table and began trying to pace round the cluttered chamber.
"The coercion lies in the past. They stripped Eldidd of its rights and its independence under threat of open slaughter. It's the honor of the thing, Perro."
"If I break an oath, I don't have any honor left worth fighting over." Idly Pertyc touched the device on his shirt.
"Ah, curse your horseshit Badgers! If you don't come in with us, what then? Are you going to run to this false king with the tale?"
"Never, and all for your sake. Do you think I'd put my sworn friend's neck in a noose? I'd die first."
Danry sighed, looking away.
"I wish you'd stay out, too." Pertyc said.
"And I'd die before I'd do that. You can trumpet your neutrality to the four corners of the world, but you're still going to be in the middle of it. What do you think we're going to do, muster our warbands right down in Aberwyn? When the spring comes, we're meeting in the forest, here in the west."
"You scummy bastards!"
Danry laughed, tossing his head back and giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder.
"We'll do our best not to disturb his lordship or trample his kitchen garden. Now here, spring's a long way away. I have faith you'll be mustering with us when the time comes. It might be dangerous if you didn't. You know I'd never lift my hand against your dun and kin, but, well, as for the others . . . " He let the words trail significantly away.
"Neutrals have found themselves stripped and sieged before, huh? You're right enough. You tell our friends that I'll protect my lands to my last breath, whether they claim to have a king on their side or not."
"They wouldn't expect any less from you. I warn you, though, when we win this fight, you can't expect much honor or standing in the new kingdom."
"I'll take my chances on that. I'd rather die a beggar than break my sworn oath." Pertyc smiled faintly. "And the word, my friend, isn't 'when' you win. It's 'if.'"