"Kerr, Katharine - Westlands 02 - A Time Of Omens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

Even though Maddyn considered hunting the murderers a waste of time, and he knew that every other man in the troop was dreading camping out in the chilly damp, no one so much as suggested arguing with Nevyn's scheme. If anyone had, Maddyn himself would have been the one to do it, because he was a bard of sorts, with a bard's freedom to speak on any matter at all, as well as being second in command of this troop of mercenaries newly become the prince's guard. The true commander, Caradoc, was too afraid of Nevyn to say one wrong word to the old man, while Maddyn was, in some ways, the only real friend Nevyn had. Carrying what provisions the dun could spare them at the end of winter's lean times, the silver daggers, with the prince and old Nevyn riding at the head of the line, clattered out the gates just at noon. With them was a wagon and a couple of servants with shovels to give the bodies a decent burial.
"At least the blasted clouds have all blown away," Caradoc said with a sigh. "I had a chance for a word with the king's chief huntsman, by the by. He says that there's an old hunting lodge about ten, twelve miles to the northeast, right on the river. If we can find it, it might still have a roof of sorts."
"If we're riding that way to begin with."
They found the murdered men and their horses where they'd left them, and it ached Maddyn's heart to think how close they'd been to safety when their Wyrd fell upon them. While the servants looked for a place where the thawing ground was good and soft, Nevyn coursed back and forth like a hunting dog and examined everything-the dead men, the horses, the soggy ground around them.
"You and the men certainly trampled all over everything, Maddo," he grumbled.
"Well, we looked for footprints and tracks and suchlike. If they'd left a trail we would have found it, but you've got to remember that the ground was frozen hard when this happened."
"True enough. Where's the third lad, the one who almost got away?"
Maddyn took him across the field to the sprawled and puffing corpse. In the warming day the smell was loathsome enough to make the bard keep his distance, but Nevyn knelt right down next to the thing and began to examine the ground as carefully as if he were looking for a precious jewel. Finally he stood up and walked away with one last disgusted shake of his head.
"Find anything?"
"Naught. I'm not even sure what I was hoping to get, to tell you the truth. It just seems that . . . " Nevyn let his words trail away and stood there slack-mouthed for a moment. "I want to wash my hands off, and I see a stream over there."
Maddyn went with him while he knelt down and, swearing at the coldness of the water, scrubbed his hands in the rivulet. All at once the old man went tense, his eyes unfocused, his mouth slack again, his head tilted a little as if he listened to a distant voice. Only then did Maddyn notice that the streamlet brimmed with glassy-blue undines, rising up in crests and wavelets. In their midst, and yet somehow beyond them, like a man coming through a doorway from some other place, was a presence. Maddyn could barely see it, a vast silvery shimmer that seemed to partake of both water and air like some preternatural fog, forming itself into a shape that might not even have existed beyond his desire to see it as a shape. Then it was gone, and Maddyn shuddered once with a toss of his head.
"Geese walking on your grave?" Nevyn said mildly.
When Maddyn looked around he saw Owaen and the prince walking over to them and well within earshot.
"Must be, truly. Here, Owaen, did you and the lads find anything new?"
"Doubt me if there's aught to find. Young Branoic did come up with this, though. Insisted it might be important, but he couldn't say why." Owaen looked positively sour as he handed Nevyn a thin sliver of bone, about six inches long, barely a half inch wide, but pointed on both ends. "Sometimes I think that lad is daft, I truly do."
"Not at all." Nevyn was turning the sliver round and round in his thin, gnarled fingers. "It's human bone, to begin with. And look how someone's worked it-smoothed it, shaped it, and then polished it."
"What?" Owaen's sourness deepened to disgust. "What is it, some kind of knife handle?"
"It's not, but a stylus to rule lines on parchment."
"A stylus?" Maddyn broke in. "Who would make a thing like that out of human bone?"
"Who indeed, Maddo lad? That's the answer I'd very much like to have: who indeed?"
In his role as a learned man Nevyn recited a few suitable lines of Dawntime poetry over the corpses; then the silver daggers mounted up and left the servants to get on with the burying. When they rode out they headed for the river. Maddyn spurred his horse up next to the old man's and mentioned the decrepit hunting lodge.
"It'll be better shelter than none, truly," Nevyn said.
"You don't suppose our enemies camped there, do you?"
"They might have once, but they're long gone by now." He gave Maddyn a wink. "I have some rather reliable information to that effect. Tell the men we won't be out hunting wild geese long, Maddo. I just want one last look around, that's all."
Only then was Maddyn sure that he had indeed seen some exalted personage in the stream.
Just at sunset they reached the lodge, a wooden roundhouse, its thatch half-gone, standing along with a stables behind a palisade that was missing as many logs as a peasant his teeth. As soon as they rode within five hundred yards of the place the horses turned nervous, tossing their heads and blowing, dancing a little in the muddy road. Maddyn had the feeling that they would have bolted if they hadn't been tired from their long day's ride.
"Oho!" Nevyn said. "My liege, you wait here with Caradoc and most of the men. Maddyn, you, Owaen, and Branoic come with me."
"You'd better take more men than that, Councillor," Maryn said.
"I won't need a small army, my liege. Most like there's naught left here but bad memories, anyway."
"But the horses-"
"See things men don't see, but men know things that horses don't know. And with that riddle, you'll have to rest content."
Nevyn was right enough, in the event, although the 'bad memory' turned out to be bad indeed. The men dismounted and walked the last of the way to the lodge, and as soon as they stepped through the gap they saw and smelled what had been spooking the animals. Nailed to the inside of the palisade, like a shrike nailed to a farmer's barn, was the corpse of a man, half-eaten by ravens and well ripened by the spring weather. Yet the worst thing wasn't the stench. The corpse was hung upside down and mutilated-the head cut off and nailed between its legs with what seemed to be-from the fragment left-its private parts stuffed into its mouth. Branoic stared for a long moment, then turned and ran to the shelter of the palisade to vomit, heavily and noisily.
"Uh gods!" Owaen whispered. "What?!"
For all his aplomb earlier, Nevyn looked half sick now, his face dead white and looking with all its wrinkles more like old parchment than ever. He ran his tongue over dry lips and spoke at last.
"A would-be deserter, most like, or a traitor of some sort. They left him that way so he'd roam as a haunt forever. All right, lads, get back to the troop. I think they'll all agree that we don't truly want to camp here tonight, shelter or not."
"I should think not, by the asses of the gods!" Owaen turned to Maddyn. "I know the horses are tired, but we'd best put a couple of miles between ourselves and this place if there's a haunt about."
"You're going to, certainly," Nevyn broke in. "I'm going to stay here."
"Not alone you aren't," Maddyn snapped.
"I don't need guards with swords, lad. I'm not in danger. If I can't handle one haunt, what kind of sorcerer am I?"
"What about this poor bastard?" Owaen jerked his thumb at the corpse. "We should give him some kind of burial."
"Oh, I'll tend to that, too." Nevyn started walking for the gate. "I'll just get my horse, and then you all go on your way. Come fetch me first thing in the morning."
Somewhat later, when they were all making camp-in a meadow about a mile and a half downriver-it occurred to Maddyn that Nevyn seemed to know an awful lot about these mysterious people who had left that ugly bit of sacrilege on the palisade. Although he was normally a curious man, he decided that he could live without asking him to explain.

With the last of the sunset, Nevyn brought his horse inside the tumble-down lodge, tied him on a loose rope to the wall and tended him, then dumped his bedroll and saddlebags near the hearth, where there lay a sizable if dusty pile of firewood already cut, left by the hirelings of the dark dweomermaster behind this plot-or so he assumed anyway. As assumptions went, it was a solid one. After he confirmed that the chimney was clear by sticking his head up it for a look, he piled up some logs and lit them with a wave of his hand. Once the fire had blazed up enough to illumine the room, he searched it thoroughly, even poking at the rotting walls with the point of his table dagger. His patience paid off when under a pile of leaves that had drifted in through a window he found a pewter disk about the size of a thumbnail, of the kind sewn onto saddlebags and other horse gear as decorations. Stamped into it was the head of a boar.
"I wonder," he said aloud. "The Boar clan's territory lies a long way from here, but still, if they thought the journey worth it for some purpose . . . are they in league with the dark dweomer then?"
The idea made him shudder. He slipped the disk into his brigga pocket, then paced back and forth before the fire as he considered what he was going to do about the possible haunt. First, of course, he had to discover if indeed that poor soul whose body rotted outside was still hanging about the site of his death. He laid more wood on the fire, poked it around with a green stick until it burned nice and evenly, then gathered up a mucky little pile of the damp and mildewed thatch that had slid from the roof over the years. If he needed it, the stuff would produce dense smoke. Then he sat down in front of the hearth, let himself relax, and waited.
It was close to an hour later when he felt the presence. At first it seemed only that a cold draught had wafted in from the door behind him, but he saw the salamanders in the fire turn their heads and look up in the direction of something. The room turned thick with silence. Still he said nothing, nor did he move, not even when the hair on the back of his neck prickled at the etheric force oozing from the haunt. There was a sound, too, a wet snuffling as if a hound were searching for a scent all over the floor, and every now and then, a scrabbling, as if some animal scratched at the floor with its nails. As the air around him grew colder, he concentrated on keeping his breathing slow and steady and his mind at peace. With a burst of sparks the salamanders disappeared. The thing was standing right behind him.
"Have you left somewhat here that won't let you rest, lad?"
He could feel puzzlement; then it drifted away, snuffling and scrabbling round the joining of floor and wall.