"Duncan, Dave - Seventh Sword - 02 - Coming Of Wisdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

That was wrong. That was all wrong. Quili knew little about swordsmen, but she knew more about them than Sal'o did. Hiding the women would be the absolute worst thing to do.
"You mustn't! It'll be an insult! They'll be furious!"
"But, priestess..."
She was not a priestess. She was only a Second, an apprentice. The tenants called her priestess as a courtesy because she was all they had, but she was only seventeen and Sal'o was a farmer of the Third and a grandfather and Motipodi's deputy, so she could not possibly give him orders, but she was also the local expert on swordsmen, and she knew that hiding the women would be a terrible provocation... She needed time to think.
"Wait outside! Don't let the women leave. I'll be right there."
"Yes, Quili," Sal'o said, and the room was dark. Plumes of phantom light still floated on blackness in her eyes. The outer door banged, and she heard him shouting.
DAVE DUNCAN 3
Quili threw off the blanket and shivered herself a coating of goose bumps. The flags were icy and uneven as she padded across to the window and threw open the shutter. A faint glow entered, accompanied by a hiss of rain and dripping sounds from the roof.
One of her two gowns was muddy, for yesterday she had been thinning the carrots. Her other was almost as shabby, yet somewhere she still had an old one she had brought from the temple. It had been her second best then and was better than her other two now—gardening ruined clothes much faster than being an acolyte did. She found it in the chest, yanked it out, and pulled it over her head in one long, shivery movement. It was surprisingly tight. She must have filled out more than she had thought. What would swordsmen think of a priestess who wore a tight-fitting gown like this? She fumbled for her shoes and a comb at the same time.
Her wooden soles clacked on the paving. She opened the squeaky outer door even as she reached for her cloak, hanging on a peg beside it. The bottom edge of the sky was brightening below a carpet of black cloud. More roosters screamed welcome to the dawn. She was still dragging the comb through her long tangles; her eyes felt puffy and her mouth dry.
On the far side of the pond, four or five of the smoky rush lights hissed amid a crowd of a dozen adults and some frightened children. Two or three more people were heading toward mem. Light reflected fuzzily in the rain-pebbled water; other lights danced in a couple of windows. There was no wind, only steady, relentless drizzle; summer rain, not even very cold.
She splashed along the trail, around the pond to the group. Rain soaked her hair and dribbled into her collar. Silence fell at her approach. She was the local expert on swordsmen.
Why would swordsmen be coming here?
Several voices started to speak, but Salimono's drowned them out. "Is it safe, priestess?"
"It isn't safe to hide the women!" Quili said firmly. Kandoru had told stories about deserted villages being burned. "You'd provoke them. No, it's the men!"
"But they didn't do it!" a woman wailed.
"It wasn't us!" said others. "You know that!"
4 THE COMING OF WISDOM
"Hush!" she said, and they hushed. They were all older than she, even Nia, and yet they hushed. They were alt bigger than she—husky, raw peasant folk, gentle and bewildered and indistinct in the gloom. "SaTo, did you send a message to her ladyship'1"
"PiPowent."
"I think maybe all the men should go..."
There was another terrified chorus of "We didn't do it!"
"Quiet! I know that. I'll testify to that. But I don't think it was reported."
There was a silence. Then Myi's voice growled, "How could it be reported?"
There had been no swordsmen left to report it to.
Would that matter? Quili did not know.
When an assassination went unreported, was it all the witnesses who were equally guilty, or was there some other, even more horrible formula? Either way, she was sure that the men were in danger. Swordsmen rarely killed women.
"I'll go and greet them. They won't hurt me." Quili spoke with as much confidence as she could manage. The priesthood was sacrosanct, wasn't it? "But I mink you men should all go off wood 'cutting or something until we know why they've come. Women get food ready. They'll want breakfast. They may go straight on to the manor, but well try to keep them here as long as we can, if there aren't too many... How many of them are there, Sal'o?"
"Don't know."
"Mfell, go and tell Adept Motipodi. Wood cutting, or land clearing up on the hill until we find out what they want. Arrange signals. Now, off you go!"
All the men ran. Quili huddled her cloak about her. "Myi? Prepare some food. Meat, if you can find any. And beer."
"What if they ask where the men are?"
'Tell lies," Quili said. This was a priestess speaking?
"What if they want us to... to go to bed?" That was Nia, and her man Hantula was almost as old as Kandoru had been.
Quili laughed, surprising herself. She was having nightmares of bodies and blood all over the ground, and Nia was
DAVE DUNCAN 5
dreaming of a tussle with some handsome young swordsman. "Do it, if you want to! Enjoy yourself!"
Incredulously Nona said, "A married woman? It's all right?"
Quili paused to drag up memories of lessons in the temple. But she was sure. "Yes. It's quite all right. Not any swordsman, but with a free sword it's all right. He is on the service of the Goddess and deserves all our hospitality."
Kandoru had always said that it was a great honor for a woman to be chosen by a free, but when Quili had known him he had been no longer a free sword. He had been a resident swordsman, limited to one woman, limited by age; limited also by failing health, although sometimes he had sounded as if that had been her fault.
"Kol'o won't like it," Nona muttered. She had not been married long.
"He should," Quili said. "If you have a baby within a year, it can have a swordsman fathermark." She heard them all hiss with sudden excitement. She was a city girl and expected to know all these things. She was also their priestess; if she said it was all right, then it would be all right. Swordsmen never raped, Random had insisted. They never had to.
"Really? A whole year? How soon?"
Quili did not know, but she glanced up at Nona's face. The flicker from the dying rush lights was too blurred to show expression. If she were pregnant, men that wasn't showing, either. "Hold on to it for a couple of weeks, and I'll testify to the facemarker for you."
Nona blushed, and that did show, and the others laughed. They had little to give their children, these humble folk. A swordsman fathermark would be worth more man much gold. To a girl it would mean a high brideprice. To a boy, if he were nimble, a chance for admission to the craft. Even a young husband would swallow his pride for those and talk of being honored, whatever he truly felt. The laugh broke the tension. Good! Now they would not flee in terror or unwittingly provoke violence.
But Quili had to go and meet the swordsmen. She shivered and clutched her cloak tighter yet. Suddenly she realized that
6 THE COMING OF WISDOM
she had met only one swordsman in her whole life—Kandoni, her murdered husband.
The rain might be faltering. Dawn was certainly close, the^ eastern sky brightening. The roosters were in blatant competition now. Leaving the twittering women, Quili splashed off along the road. One way led to the manor, the other to the River and the jetty. Beyond Salimono's house and the dam, the track dropped swiftly into a little gorge, and into darkness.
She went slowly, hearing the slap of her shoes in puddles, trying not to imagine herself tumbling into the stream and arriving at the jetty all covered in mud. Going to meet swordsmen ... She should have brought one of the rush lights.