"Kate Elliott - Crown of Stars 7 - Crown of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

Rain trickled into Hanna's mouth through her parted lips. “Another day's ride or more to the palace
at Augensburg."
"Best to go on, then? A palace sounds more appealing than a village walled with storm wrack."
"It's burned down, my lady."
"What's burned down? The village?"
Hanna shuddered. "The palace, my lady. It burned down a few years back."
"There must be a settlement beside it, a town made prosperous by palace traffic?"
Hanna shut her eyes. She fought as memories surfaced. She was hot all at once, sweating, but it was
only the drizzle hardening into rain. "I don't know, my lady. There might be."
"Did it burn in the conflagration, too? Eagle, what ails you? It's not like you to—" Bertha was a
steady commander, but she had a temper. "Give me the information I need!"
Hanna discovered that her hands were shaking on the reins, and she had to tighten her knees to hold
her horse in one place as it caught her mood. "I pray you, forgive me, my lady." She spoke in a rush.
"That town fell into the path of the army of the Quman. I don't remember. I don't know if any survived."
A drum of footfalls and a scattering of shouts alerted them that someone lived still in the village
beyond. Bertha raised a hand to ready her archers and spearmen.
Along the path came a trio of hardy men, each armed with the kind of weapons farmers make for
themselves: one bore a staff sharpened to a point, one had a staff with a scythe bound securely to one
end to make of it a halberd, and the third held an actual iron sword of the kind a lady's guardsman might
wield. He also had a length of board cut into a teardrop shape and fixed to his left arm as a shield, crude
but effective and unmarked by any heraldic sigil.
It was this man who climbed atop one of the logs and regarded them with no smile and no welcome.
"You can't come here. We've blocked the road."
"We need shelter," said Lady Bertha. "We are loyal subjects of the regnant, good Wendish folk all. I
am escorting these holy men and Women who served King Henry as part of his schola. We have been
months on the road out of Aosta. We ride north to Saony."
"You can't come in," he said. "You might be carrying the plague. What's in those wagons?"
"Feed for the horses. Supplies. Most importantly, we carry with us a holy abbess, aged and weak.
She needs shelter and a warm fire against the frost that afflicts us every night."
"A plague-ridden beggar, no doubt." He was a stocky man with the broad shoulders and thickset
arms of a man who works every day with his hands. "Or men with animal's faces, hiding under the
canvas. We can't chance it."
"You're the carpenter's son," said Hanna suddenly. "I recognize you. I am a King's Eagle. I
sheltered one night in your village a few years back. Do you remember me?"
He sized her up. He had dark brown eyes, eastern eyes, they called it in these parts, a memory of
raiders out of the east who had come and gone but left something of themselves behind in later
generations. He shook his head, and seeing that he did not know her, she pushed back her hood.
"I was here with four Lions," she added. "We'd come from the east."
"Ah!" he said. "I recall that hair. You're out of the north, so you said."
"That's where I was born. I pray you, friend, do not forget what courtesy is due to clerics and
Eagles. Let us bide just this one afternoon and night. We'll go on our way in the morning."
"No."
Lady Bertha pushed Hanna aside. "Give us shelter this one night, and porridge and ale, if that is all
you have. In the name of Henry and his son, Prince Sanglant, I command it."
He gestured toward her with his sword as if to ward off an evil spirit. "We will not fall for that trick
a second time!"
"What trick?" asked Hanna.
His gaze shifted past her face, and she turned in the saddle to see that Sister Rosvita and several of
the young clerics had walked forward through the mud to see what was holding them up.
"These are only a few of the clerics we protect," Hanna added. "This is no trick. I pray you—"