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

Danry turned red, a hectic flush of rage across his cheeks. Pertyc held his gaze until Danry forced out a smile.
"Let us give the gods their due," Danry said. "Who knows where a man's Wyrd will lead him? Very well. 'If' it is."
Pertyc walked outside with Danry to the ward, where his horse was standing saddled and ready at the gates. Danry mounted, said a pleasant and normal farewell, then trotted down the road to the north. As Pertyc watched the dun disappearing, he felt danger like a cold ache in his stomach. The dolts, he thought, and maybe I'm the biggest dolt of all! He turned and looked over his dun, a small, squat broch standing inside a timber-laced wall without ramparts or barbicans. Although his demesne was continually short on coin, he decided it would be wise to spend what he had on fortifications, even if he could only afford to build some earthworks and ditches. Whatever else it may have lacked, his dun had the best watchtower in the kingdom for the Cannobaen light, where every night a beacon burned to warn passing ships of where submerged rocks just off the coast. If the rebellion swept a siege his way, it occurred to Pertyc, he could perhaps parlay keeping the light into a reason for keeping his neutrality. Perhaps. The dread in his stomach turned to burning ice.
Later that same day, he was drinking in his great hall when a page came with the news that there was a silver dagger at the gates. Since he had only ten men in his warband, he had Maer shown in straightaway.
"I'll take you on, silver dagger. I don't know when we'll see action, but another man might come in handy. Your keep, and if there's fighting, a silver piece a week."
"My thanks, my lord. Winter's coming on, and the roof over my head's going to be welcome."
"Good. Uh, Maer? If you shave that mustache off, it'll grow in thicker next time, you know."
Maer drew himself up to his full height.
"Is his lordship suggesting or ordering?"
"Merely suggesting. No offense intended."
Pertyc turned him over to his captain, then went up to the women's hall, a comfortable sunny room that covered half the second story of the tower. It was the domain of his lordship's old nurse, Maudda, all stooped back and long white hair these days, but still doing her best to serve the clan by tending Pertyc's four-year-old daughter, Becyla. Pertyc felt very bad about keeping the old woman working, but there was, quite simply, no one else who could handle the lass. As headstrong as her mother, he thought, then winced at the very mental mention of his absent wife. He found them sitting in a patch of sun by the window, Becyla in a chair, Maudda standing behind, keeping up a running flow of chatter as she combed the lass's hair, but as soon as Pertyc stepped in, Becyla twisted free and rushed to her father.
"Da, Da, I want to go riding. Please, Da, please?"
"In a bit, my sweet."
"Now!" She tossed back her head and howled in rage.
"Stop that! You're upsetting poor Maudda."
With a visible wrench of will she fell silent, turning to look at her beloved nurse. She was a beautiful child, Becyla, with her moonbeam-pale hair and enormous gray eyes, tall and slender for her age and as graceful as a fawn when she moved.
"Now, lambkin," Maudda said. "You'll go riding soon enough. Your da's the lord, you see, and we all must do what he says. The gods made him a lord, and we-"
"Horseshit!" She stamped her foot. "But I'll be good if you say so."
With a sigh and a watery smile, Maudda held out her arms, and Becyla ran to her. I've got to get the poor old dear some help, Pertyc told himself. He had this thought with the same tedious regularity with which he first enlisted young nursemaids, then watched them retreat.
"Maudda, I wanted your advice on somewhat," he said aloud. "I've been thinking about my son. Do you think my cousin would take it amiss if I rode to his dun and fetched Adraegyn home for the winter?"
"Ah. You've been hearing them rumors of trouble, then."
"Ye gods, do you know everything?"
"Everything that matters, my lord."
"Please, Da, go get him," Becyla put in. "I miss Draego."
"No doubt you do," Pertyc said. "I think it might be best all round if he came home. I can train him myself, if it comes to that."
"Da?" Becyla broke in. "I want to go with you."
"You can't, my sweet. Young ladies don't go riding round the countryside like silver daggers."
"I want to go!"
"I said you can't."
"I don't care what you say. I don't care what your dumb gods say, either. I don't want to be a lady. I want to go riding. I want to go with you when you get Draego." With a shriek she threw herself down on the floor and began to kick.
"If I may be so bold, my lord?" Maudda pitched her voice loud over the general noise. "Do get out and leave her to me."
Pertyc fled the field. He was beginning to wish he'd done what his wife wanted and let her take his daughter away with her. He'd refused only out of a stubborn honor. He could only thank the gods for making Adraegyn a reasonable and fairly human being.

"Now, you know who does have a little cottage," Samwna said thoughtfully. "Wersyn the merchant. He had it built for his mother, you see, when she was widowed, but the poor lady passed to the Otherlands just this spring. No surprise, truly, because she was seventy winters if she was a day old. She always said sixty-four, but hah! you can tell those things, good sir. But anyway, it's a nice stout little place with a big hearth."
"Does it have a bit of land around it?"
"Oh, it does, because she liked her flowers and suchlike. Besides, it had to be a good stone's throw away from Wergyn's house. Moligga-that's his wife-put her foot down about that, and I can't say I blame her, because old Bwdda was the nosy type, always lifting the lids of her daughter-in-law's pots, if you take my meaning, good sir."
Nevyn began to remember why he normally avoided small towns.
On the other hand, the cottage turned out to be both suitable and cheap, and he rented it immediately, then spent the rest of the day unpacking and settling in. On the morrow, he decided that while he'd keep his riding horse, the mule would only be a nuisance. Samwna, that font of all local information, told him to try selling it to a farmer named Nalyn.
"He lives out near Lord Pertyc's dun. He married the farm, you see, or I should say, it still belongs to poor dear Myna-she was widowed so young, poor thing, and her with two daughters to raise on her own-but now one of the daughters is married. Lidyan, that is, and it's good for them to have a man to work the fields again, I must say, so it's Nalyn's farm in a way, like."
Nevyn made his escape at last and rode out, with the mule on a tether rope, and found the farm. When Nevyn dismounted near the shabby thatched roundhouse, he could hear someone yelling inside. A man's voice, thick with rage, drifted out, followed by the sound of a woman weeping and pleading. Ye gods, he thought, does this Nalyn beat his poor wife? A second woman's voice yelled back, cracking in a string of curses. A young heavyset man came stalking out of the house. Just as he took a step out of the doorway, an egg came sailing after him, caught him on the back of the head, and shattered. With an oath, the man started to turn back in, then saw Nevyn.
"My apologies," Nevyn said. "I just heard in the village you might want to buy a mule. I can come back later."
"No need." The young farmer was busily trying to get the egg off the back of his head with both hands. "I do indeed need a mule, though my sister's stubborn enough for a whole rotten herd of them. Let me just wash this off at the well."
Laughter rang in the doorway, and a young woman, about Maer's age, came strolling out. She was pretty, raven-haired and blue-eyed, but not truly beautiful, with her hair cropped off short in the way many farm women wore their hair, out of the way of hard work. Her dress was dirty, much mended, and hitched up around her waist at the kirtle to leave her ankles and feet bare.
"And who's this, Nalyn? Another of your candidates for my betrothal?"
"Hold your cursed tongue, Glae!" Nalyn snapped.
"He's better-looking than Doclyn, aged or not. No offense, good sir, but my beloved brother-in-law is bound and determined to marry me off to get rid of me, you see. Are you in the market for a young wife, by any chance?"
"Glae!" Nalyn howled. "I said hold your tongue!"
"Don't give me orders, you afterbirth of a miscarried wormy sow."
With an anguished glance in Nevyn's direction Nalyn walked off to the well to wash away the egg. The lass leaned comfortably against the doorjamb and gave Nevyn a brilliant smile that transformed her face for one brief moment. Then she was merely wary, and plain, her eyes too suspicious and cold for beauty.
"Here, good sir, I haven't even asked your name. Mine's Glaenara. You must've been talking with the village women if you knew we were in the market for a mule."