"Seventh Sword 02 - The Coming of Wisdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

BOOK ONE:

HOW THE SWORDSMAN RAN AWAY

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"Quili! Wake up! Priestess!"

Whoever was shouting was also banging on the outer door. Quili rolled over and buried her head under the blanket. Surely she had just come to bed?

The outer door squeaked. The banging came again, now on the planks of the inner door, nearer and much louder.

"Apprentice Quili! You must come!" More banging.

The trouble with summer was that there was never enough night for sleeping, yet the little room was still quite black. The roosters had not started yet... No, there was one, far away ... She would have to waken. Someone must be sick or dying.

Then the inner door squealed open, and a man was waving a rush light and shouting. "Priestess! You must come—there are swordsmen, Quili!"

"Swordsmen?" Quili sat up.

Salimono was a roughhewn, lumbering man, a fanner of the Third. Normally imperturbably placid, he was capable on rare occasions of becoming as flustered as a child. Now one of his great hands was waving the sparking rush light all around, threatening to set fire to his own silver hair, or Quili's straw mattress, or the ancient shingles of the roof. It scrolled brilliance in the dark. It flickered on stone walls, and on his haggard face, and in Quili's eyes.

"Swordsmen. .. coming ... Oh! Beg pardon, priestess!" He

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2 THE COMING OF WISDOM

turned around quickly, just as Quili fetl back and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

"Sal'o, you did say 'swordsmen'?"

"Yes, priestess. In a boat. By the jetty. Piliphanto saw them. You hurry, Quili..." He headed for the door.

"Wait!"

Quili wished she could take off her head, shake it, and put it back on again. She had walked away most of the night with Agol's baby, surely the worst case of colic in the history of the People.

Swordsmen? The rush light was filling the tiny room with fumes of goose grease. Piliphanto was not a total idiot. No thinker, but no idiot. He was a keen fisherman, which could explain why he had been down on the jetty before dawn. There would be more light down by the water, and a swordsman's silhouette would be distinctive. It was possible.

"What are you doing about them?"

Standing in the doorway with his back firmly turned, Sali-mono said, '.'Getting the women out, of course!"

"What! Why?"

"Ach! Swordsmen."