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

As the gates swung open, he took the lead, urging the mule along with little clucking noises such as he’d make to encourage a ferret. One of the guards handed him a switch.
‘Beat the mule as much as it needs,’ he remarked. ‘Stubborn ugly things.’
‘Here!’ Meer bellowed. ‘What did he give you? A stick or suchlike? Throw it away, lad. I’ll teach you how to handle a mule, and beatings have no part in it.’
Secure in Meer’s blindness the guard grinned and rolled his eyes, but Jahdo tossed the switch away.
All that morning they followed a hard-packed dirt road east through reasonably familiar country. Although Jahdo had never been more than a mile or two away from Cerr Cawnen, the farmers round about were still his people. Their wooden longhouses, all painted white and roofed with split planks, stood in the midst of fields of volcanic earth so rich some thought it magical. Often, as they walked past a fenced field or a pasture, a well-dressed man or a couple of plump children would leave their ploughing or cattle to run to the side of the road and stare at them. For the first few miles, Meer strode along in silence, swinging his stick back and forth on the road with one massive hand as he led his horse with the other. Wrapped in his instant homesickness, Jahdo was glad to be left alone at first, but the farther they went, the harder it became to keep back his tears.
Since he’d never eaten that morning, as the sun rose high in the sky his stomach began to growl. He could imagine his family coming back home for their noon meal, gathering at the long table and watching while Mam dipped soup from the kettle and cut bread into chunks. He caught his breath with a sob.
‘What’s this?’ Meer bellowed. ‘What do I hear?’
‘Naught, good bard.’
‘Hah! You can’t fool my ears, lad. Don’t even try. Huh. The sun feels hot on my back. Is it near midday?’
‘It is, truly.’
‘Time for us to stop and see what kind of provisions your councilmen gave us, then. Look round. Do you see a stream nearby? We should be watering our animals, anyway.’
About a quarter-mile down the road Jahdo found them a shallow stream with a grassy bank. Working under Meer’s direction, he unbuckled the pack saddles, but Meer himself had to heft them down. Despite his affliction the Gel da’Thae moved remarkably surely when it came to tending his horses. Watching him rub down the white horse, Baki, with a twist of grass, with the bard talking under his breath all the while, or seeing him patting the horse and leading him to the stream, it was hard, in fact, to remember that Meer was blind. The mule received the same attention.
‘We’ll name you Gidro,’ Meer announced. ‘That means strong in my people’s talk, and a fine strong mule you are.’
Gidro leaned its forehead against the bard’s chest and snorted.
‘Mules are one of the thirteen clever beasts, young Jahdo. Your people abuse them and call them stubborn, but by every demon among us, who can blame the mule? Here, he thinks to himself, why should I be sweating and straining my back all for the benefit of some bald two-legged thing that smells of meat and piss? All I get out of it is sour hay and a draughty shed. A pox on them all, thinks the mule.’
Jahdo found himself laughing.
‘That’s better, lad,’ Meer said. ‘I know it’s a hard thing I’ve asked you to do. Now go through those packs, there, and find us a bite to eat.’
Much to his delight, Jahdo found a lot of food wrapped and cached in various cloth bags, including some chewy honey cakes. Meer had him bring out some dark bread and cheese, which Jahdo sliced up with his grandfather’s knife. Before they ate, however, Meer recited yet another prayer, though mercifully it was a good bit shorter than his effort back at Cerr Cawnen, to thank the god Elmandrel for the food.
‘The gods do matter a fair bit to you, don’t they, Meer?’ Jahdo said.
‘They do, and so they should to all the Gel da’Thae, for we are sinners in their sight, more loathsome than worms.’ Meer held out his hand for lunch. ‘Thanks, lad. That cheese smells good, I must say. At any rate, we all sinned mightily against the three hundred sixty-five gods and the thousands upon thousands of the Children of the Gods, back in the old days, when the Red Reivers fell upon us. Your people, now, they suffered much at the hands of the Lijik Ganda, but as victims they did not sin.’
‘Er well, that be splendid, then.’
Meer merely grunted and bit into his bread and cheese. Jahdo followed suit, and for a long time neither of them spoke. Jahdo had heard stories of the old days from priests and singers among his own people, who recited them at public feast-days, such as the celebrations of spring and the harvest time, but he had never considered that those ancient events would someday reach out dead hands to touch his own life. The Slavers lived only in stories, didn’t they, to frighten children into behaving? Stop pinching your sister right now, or the Slavers will come get you - that sort of thing. But he’d just found out that they were real, and he was heading their way.
Far far to the east, or so the stories ran, lay a beautiful kingdom that once had belonged to the ancestors of the Rhiddaer folk, where they lived in peace and prosperity near the trees and springs of the ancient gods. One dark day a new people appeared, warriors who thundered down on horseback and killed or enslaved the peaceful farmers. On their stolen land and with their slave labour, these invaders built stone towers and towns made of round houses, where they lived at ease while the ancestors were forced to work the fields. A few at a time, though, the ancestors had slipped away, seeking freedom. Some died in the attempt; others escaped to found a new country, the Rhiddaer, where kings and lords such as commanded the Slavers were forbidden forever by law. Finally, the Slavers’ blood-thirst)- ways brought ruin upon their own heads, when a huge civil war, lasting five and a hundred years, tore their kingdom apart. Most of the ancestors escaped during those days of retribution and made their way to freedom in the Rhiddaer. For a long time everyone hoped that the Slavers were all dead, but unfortunately, the warring madness had left them in the end, and their kingdom was prospering again.
‘Meer?’ Jahdo said. The old stories do say that the Slavers used to cut off people’s heads and then tie them to their saddles and stuff. The heads, I mean, not the rest of the people. That be not true, bain’t?’
‘l fear me it is, lad. The lore passed down from bard to bard confirms it.’
Jahdo dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. After this whole long horrible day, the lore was just one thing too many to endure. He heard Meer sigh and move; then a broad hand fumbled for his shoulder and patted it.
‘Now, now, we’ve got to put our trust in the gods. They’ll guide us and protect us, and the Slavers will never even know we were walking their border.’
Jahdo snivelled back his tears and wiped his face on his sleeve.
‘Well, I be sorry I did cry.’
‘Don’t you think my heart aches within me, too? I tell you again, lad, warriors we are not, and thus the gods will hold us not to the warrior’s harsh honour.’
‘All right, then, but if ever I do get home again I’ll have to be a warrior when I grow up. I’ll have to join the militia, I mean. Everybody does. I guess it’s not like that in your country.’
‘It’s not, indeed. Only the chosen few become warriors, the best among us, and a grim lot they are, soaked in blood and death from the time they’re but colts.’
‘They be just like the Slavers were, then.’
Meer laughed, a rumble under his breath.
‘So they are, but I wouldn’t say that to them, if ever you meet some. And truly, you just might in the days ahead. You just might indeed.’
After they’d eaten, they loaded up the horse and mule again and headed east on the familiar road for the rest of that day. At times as they walked Meer would sing, or at least, Jahdo supposed that you could call it singing, a far different thing than the songs and simple tunes for dancing that his people knew. Meer’s voice rumbled deep and huge to match the rest of him, but it seemed he sang with his throat squeezed tight and forced the air out his nose, too - Jahdo wasn’t exactly sure - so that his notes hissed and wailed as much as they boomed, and the melody flowed up and down and round about in a long cadence of quarter-tones and sprung rhythms. Every now and then, Jahdo could have sworn he heard the bard sing chords, all by himself with no instrument to help him. At first the music threatened headaches, but by the third song Jahdo heard the patterns in it, and while he never grew to like it, he found it tolerable.
That night they made camp beside a duck pond in a farmer’s pasture, within sight of the wooden longhouse and big stone barn. After they’d eaten, Jahdo collected wood and tinder for a little fire, but he saved it for the actual dark. As the sunset faded to twilight, Jahdo found himself staring at the farm, watching the gleam from a lantern dancing in the windows, wondering how big a family lived there and if they were happy. When he wondered if he’d ever see his own family again, he started to cry, and this time Meer let him sob until he’d got it all out and felt better for it.
‘Well, lad, are you sorry you said you wanted to come?’
Jahdo tried to speak and found his throat frozen. All he could do was make a small choking sound.
‘Here, what’s that mean?’ Meer said.
‘Naught.’ Jahdo grabbed a handful of grass and blew his nose.
The Gel da’Thae swung his massive head round as if he were looking Jahdo’s way, but he said nothing. All round in the velvet evening insects buzzed and chirred. Jahdo tossed the ill-used grass away.
‘Meer? Why are you going east?’
‘That’s a fitting question, considering how I’ve dragged you away from hearth and home, but I’m not going to answer it.’
‘Here! Not fair!’
‘Fair has naught to do with it.’
Jahdo felt all his homesickness boil and turn to rage. He scrambled to his feet.
‘Then you may just find your way without me. I’m going home.’
He grabbed a bag of food from the ground and marched off, sighting on the last glow of the setting sun. Behind him Meer howled, a huge sound as if ten wolves sang.
‘Come back, come back!’