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

It struck Jahdo as viciously unjust that these people would be haggling over the ordinary details of their lives, something as petty as a gambling debt, probably, while they were dragging him off to slavery.
As they walked through the gates, Rhodry laid a heavy hand on Meer’s shoulder, and Jahdo took the bard’s arm, because his blind man’s staff made a poor guide for leading him through the confusion in the vast ward. Clustering round the towers and the inside of the walls stood wooden sheds, mostly round and thatched. Incorporated into the outer walls were long rectangles of buildings, stables on the lower level, though Jahdo couldn’t see into the upper. Scurrying round through the midst of this jumble were servants - tending horses, carrying things like firewood or sacks of what seemed to be vegetables, or even pulling a squalling goat along or driving a couple of pigs before them. Somewhere close by a blacksmith’s forge rang with hammering; dogs barked; people yelled back and forth. Every now and then an armed man strolled by, knocking any servant in his way out of it.
‘Straight ahead,’ Rhodry barked. ‘Quick like, before I find myself defending you. See that long straight building there past the pigsty, lad? That’s where we’re heading.’
Fear made Jahdo co-operative. He hurried Meer along while Rhodry kept a nervous watch behind them, and the various servants all shrieked at the very sight of them and rushed to goggle. When the armed men started jeering, Jahdo was more than glad to duck into the long stone structure, even if it did reek of the nearby hogs and something worse, too, an undertone of human filth. Inside he found a narrow passageway, lined with doors, each with a small opening near the top and a heavy oak bar across to lock them.
‘The dungeon keep,’ Rhodry remarked, confirming Jahdo’s worst guess. ‘With luck you won’t be here long.’
An elderly man, dressed in brown tatters that had once been clothes, came hobbling out of a room at the far end of the corridor.
‘Prisoners of war,’ Rhodry said to him.
‘Put them here, silver dagger.’ With arthritic hands he lifted a bar and swung a door back. ‘Shove them right along.’
Jahdo helped Meer cross the high threshold, then stepped in after, his heart pounding as badly as it had on the underground stairs. He was profoundly relieved to find a small window, barred, on the opposite wall, and thick straw, reasonably clean, on the floor. In one corner stood a leather bucket, crawling with flies - otherwise, nothing, not so much as a blanket.
‘I want them decently treated,’ Rhodry was saying to the old man. ‘Plenty of food, mind you, and clean water, and none of that mouldy bread, either. I’ll be stopping by now and again to see that you’ve made it so.’
‘It’ll be done, it’ll be done.’
The door eased shut, and the bar fell down with a thump, Jahdo could hear Rhodry and the old man squabbling down the corridor for a moment; then the old man returned.
‘Lad, lad! I’m handing you water in through the window.’
A clay pitcher appeared in the slit in the door. Jahdo could just pull it through. A clay cup with a broken handle followed, and after that a loaf of brown bread, reasonably fresh.
‘There,’ the old man snapped. ‘Cursed arrogant bastard of a silver dagger, giving an honest man orders like that.’
‘Bain’t Rhodry a lord, then?’
‘What did you say, lad?’
‘Bain’t Rhodry a lord?’
After a moment the old man laughed, and hard.
‘Not half, lad, not half. A stinking mercenary and naught more, fighting for coin, not honour like a decent man. Little better than thieves, all of that lot, Got into trouble young, they did, or they wouldn’t be riding the long road at all, would they now?’ There was the sound of him spitting onto the floor. The gall, a silver dagger giving me orders.’
Muttering under his breath, the fellow stumped away, and this time he never returned. Jahdo poured Meer a cup of water- it was indeed clean, even cool - and helped him drink.
‘I can break this bread up with my fingers,’ he said. ‘You know what I really hate, Meer? They did take my grandfather’s knife, and it were the only thing of his I ever did have that were just mine.’
Meer moaned as he passed the cup back.
‘If only I’d never brought you on this fool’s errand!’
‘It’s what the gods did decide for us. I guess.’ Jahdo heard his voice break as he wished from the bottom of his heart that he’d never come, either. ‘You couldn’t know Thavrae was going to be killed.’ He swal-f lowed hard, concentrating on pouring himself water. ‘Oh. You know f, what? I do have somewhat to give you, and I never did remember it till this moment.’ He gulped the water, set the cup down, and began fishing in his pocket. ‘Here they are. It’s the stuff Thavrae wore, the amulets and things. I did cut them off for you.’
When Jahdo laid them in Meer’s palm, the bard tightened his fingers over them for a moment, then muttered a curse and flung them hard against the wall.
‘I have done what our mother asked. I will do no more. If it weren’t for him and his foul demons, his false gods, his blasphemy and his heresy, then our clan would still have the hope of life, and neither you nor I would be caged here in this loathsome dungeon. Is it not one of the seven worst things in all of life, to fall into the hands of one’s enemies?’
Jahdo tried to find some comforting thing to say and failed. He broke the bread up into chunks and gave Meer a big one, but the bard handed it back.
‘Eat it all, lad, the whole loaf. You are young, and you have hope. Many a faithful slave’s been rewarded with freedom.’ ‘But bain’t you hungry?’ Meer shook his head no.
‘Meer, you must be - oh Meer, don’t. Don’t starve yourself to death. You mayn’t, you mayn’t! You’re all I’ve got, Meer. Please eat some of this bread. Please.’
Meer folded his arms over his chest and turned his head away. No matter how Jahdo begged and wept, he spoke not one word. In the end Jahdo gave up. His own stomach was growling from the scent of food. He wiped his face as best he could on his filthy sleeve and began to eat. Meer must have heard, because he allowed himself a brief smile.
Jahdo finished one chunk and started on another. He was wondering if they’d be fed more later in the day, or if he should be saving half the loaf, when he heard a slight sound without the door, or so he thought until he looked up to find someone inside the cell with them. In the dim light she seemed to glow, a beautiful woman, tall and slender with long ash-blonde hair that cascaded down her back, deep-set eyes the colour of storm clouds but slit vertically like a cat’s, and the strangely long and curled ears he’d seen on the god by the stream. She was dressed in clothes of silvery grey, a full shirt, belted at the waist, a pair of doeskin trousers, and boots of the same.
‘Evandar wouldn’t come himself, but I can’t bear to leave you this way, child. Fear not: things aren’t as dark as they must seem. I promise you that.’
She seemed to swirl like a trail of smoke above a campfire; then she was gone.
‘What was that voice?’ Meer snapped. ‘Who was that?’
‘It were a goddess.’ Jahdo had never been so sure of anything in his life. ‘A goddess did come to us, Meer. It’s needful for you to eat now, bain’t it? She came and did say that all be well.’
When Jahdo handed him the bread, he began to eat, slowly, savouring each bite in something like awe, while Jahdo poured himself more water and drank it the same way.
After he made his final threats to the jailor, the man who preferred to be known only as Rhodry from Aberwyn stood in the ward for a moment, considering how badly he wanted a bath and some clean clothes after a fortnight in the saddle. He knew, however, that he’d best make his report to those who’d sent him on this hunt. He headed across the ward to the broch complex, aiming for one of the smaller towers that were joined to the flanks of the main broch. Although he was planning on slipping in quietly, he found waiting for him a man he couldn’t ignore. A tall, hard-muscled fellow with moonlight-pale blond hair and grey eyes, Lord Matyc of Dun Mawrvelin was leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. Since he had no choice, Rhodry made him a bow.
‘Good morrow, my lord. Somewhat I can do for you?’
‘Just a word, silver dagger. Those two prisoners you just brought in? By whose order did you take them?’
‘The gwerbret’s himself, my lord. He sent me and Yraen out with a few of his own men.’
‘I see.’
His lordship peeled himself off the door and walked away without so much as a fare thee well. And since it was the gwerbret, Rhodry thought, there’s not one wretched thing you can do about it, is there? He would have disliked so arrogant a man as Matyc on principle alone, but recently an incident or two had left Rhodry wondering just how loyal the lord was to his overlord, Gwerbret Cadmar of Cengarn. What interested him about this latest brush with his lordship was not that Matyc had asked him a question — simple curiosity would have explained that - but the lack of further questions, such as a wondering about who Meer might be or how he’d been found, the normal sort of things you’d expect a man to ask. Rhodry watched Matyc until the lord had gone into the main broch, then went on his own way.
Right inside the door of the side tower a wrought iron staircase led up every bit as steeply as the dwarven stairs, spiralling round and past all four floors of the small and wedge-shaped chambers belonging to various of the gwerbret’s honoured servitors. On the fifth and final floor was an open area for storing sacks of charcoal to one side and one last chamber to the other Rhodry stood for a moment catching his breath, then knocked. A woman’s voice called for him to enter. He hesitated ever so slightly before he opened the door and strode in.
Dressed in pale grey brigga and a heavily embroidered white shirt, Jill was sitting on a curved, three-legged chair with a large leather-bound book on the table in front of her. Her hair, cropped off like a lad’s, was perfectly white, and her face was thin, too thin, really, so that her blue eyes seemed enormous, dominating her face the way a child’s do. Overall, in fact, she was shockingly thin, and quite pale, yet she hardly seemed weak, her eyes snapping with life when she smiled, her voice strong and vibrant as well.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘Success?’
‘Just that. We followed your directions and found them just about where you said they’d be, one human lad, one Ge! da’Thae. I’ve stowed them in the dungeon keep.’
Jill made a face.
‘Oddly enough, they’re safer there than anywhere,’ Rhodry went on. ‘Keeling in the town’s running high. A lot of townsfolk lost kin to those raiders, and the word’s gone round that their leader was a hairy creature straight out of the third Hell. How are they going to feel about having another of the same lot right within reach? Here, an odd thing. That Gel da’Thae I killed was this bard’s brother.’
‘Odd, indeed. How do you know the prisoner’s a bard?’