"01 - The Cutting Edge 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

The Impire had held the field. The fighting was ending as the surviving djinns
surrendered or were cut down. More standards were arriving, and more officers.
One of those was the commander, Proconsul Iggipolo himself, and the way he
returned the legate's salute was another inkling.
Ylo glanced up again at that potent pole he held. How could he have missed it?
Above the battle honors and even above the crossbar shone a wreath of oak
leaves, cast in gold.
Only one man in the entire army could put his personal signet on a legionary
standard.
Ylo's mind reeled. He forgot honor and comfort and doeeyed girls. He thought
Revenge! He thought hatred. He thought of his father and brothers, his cousins,
his uncles. He thought of his mother, dying disgraced, in exile. He thought that
man killed my family.
Trust. Confidence. Being close in dark places. He thought knife between the
ribs.
And then he was limping painfully along, bearing the standard high, heading for
the tents that had sprouted like a field of orderly mushrooms at the edge of the
swamp. Behind him came the legate.
And all the way battle-weary soldiers were scrambling to their feet to laud the
leader of the XIIth, the hero, the man who had saved the day. Their cheers rang
sour in Ylo's ears and the sound was bitter. He thought most popular man in the
army.
"Shandie!" they shouted. "Shandie!"
Emshandar. The prince imperial. The imperor's grandson. Heir apparent. The most
popular man in the army.

4
Never before had Ylo entered a commander's compound, but now he marched straight
in and was saluted as he did so. He set the pole in the base prepared for it and
spun around to face the procession he had been leading-or tried to, but his legs
failed him, and he almost fell. The imperor's grandson saluted the standard,
ignoring the stagger. He gave Ylo a nod that was a personal summons and headed
for his tent, followed by a gaggle of shiny-helmeted officers, few of whom had
likely bloodied their swords this day.
Ylo tagged on the end. Halfway there, his way was blocked by an oak tree garbed
in the uniform of a centurion. Eyes like two knotholes peered out of a face of
bark.
"Who're you, soldier?"
Ylo was too exhausted to be humble. "The signifer!"
The man's wooden eyes narrowed. He glanced back at the standard. "Dead or
wounded?"
"Dead. "
The centurion again blocked Ylo as he tried to move. "Do you know who he was?"
His voice creaked like falling timber. Ylo shook his head dumbly.
"His cousin. Prince Ralpnie. Fourth in line to the throne. " Ylo stared at the
arboreal face for a long moment as his beaten brain wrestled meaning from the
words. Eventually he decided they were a caution. And help. He had forgotten
such things, in two years of being a nonperson, a number.
He dragged up the proper response from some deep-buried memory. "Thanks!"
The man nodded. Then he sank down on one knee. By the time Ylo had realized that