"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 01 - Sorcery Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

He dodged her swinging fist with ease and jogged down the beach to the piles of
equipment. There, light ash frames rested amongst rolls of trussed skins, waxed woolen
cloth and coils of rope. Two huge iron cauldrons, together with their stands and pothooks,
lay amid a welter of bowls and dishes, knives and hand-axes, where someone had thrown
them down on the sand in a hurry to fetch the next load.
Fent swept an armful of the clutter into one of the cauldrons until a strange
assortment of blades and bowls stuck out of the top. "There you are," he said to Katla. "If
you think you're hard enough."
An iron cauldron this size was fantastically heavy—let alone one filled to the brim with
kitchen implements. Katla knew this to be so: one had fallen once from a rusted-through
hook and had almost crippled her: she'd danced aside quickly enough to avoid a crushed
foot, but even a glancing blow had caused her to lose a toenail to it, and she'd had to bind
her foot in cloth for a week, since she couldn't get her boot over the swelling. With a grim
look at her brother, she hefted the thing two-handed and managed to stagger half a dozen
paces with the cauldron skimming the surface of the sand, before staggering to a halt.
Every fiber of her arms protested at the weight: they felt as if they'd stretched a
knuckle-length already.
The boys burst out laughing. Even her father was grinning. She watched them,
narrow-eyed, then picked it up again with one hand, her other arm waving wildly for
balance, this time straightening the carrying arm and her back to keep the tension
running through the bones rather than the muscles, a trick she'd learned from climbing
overhanging rock. The cauldron lifted reluctantly and bumped painfully against her leg.
Katla bit her lip and soldiered on. When, after some minutes of sweaty effort, she reached
the crest of the beach, she set down the cauldron and looked back. Taking her obstinacy
for granted, the men were no longer watching her: instead, they had gathered up the rest
of the equipment and were trudging in her footsteps. When they caught up with her, Aran
took the cauldron away and exchanged it for a tent roll.
"You have nothing to prove to me, daughter," he said gently, and his eyes were as
green as the sea. "I know your heart to be as great as any man's."
So saying, and as easily as if it had been a wooden bucket, he picked up the cauldron,
and strode quickly past her.
Aran and his family worked quickly and efficiently together, with barely a word of
instruction passing between them, and less than an hour later they had erected a pair of
tents, which would provide their living space for the duration of the Allfair. And while the
Eyran tents might not be as plush or as colorful as the rich Istrian pavilions Katla had
seen at the foot of Sur's Castle, they were both weatherproof and spacious, almost twenty
feet long, fourteen broad, and over ten feet high at the center—large enough to house
family, crew, cargo, and wares.
A cold onshore breeze seemed to have sprung out of nowhere while they were
working, making the tanned leather of the roof bell and flap. Katla, her hair having long
since escaped its braid, ran to tension the wind-ropes, and found herself confronted by an
Empire man in a rich blue cloak. With his dark complexion and clean-shaven chin, it was
clear at once that he was not an island man. He wore a thin silver circlet in his black hair,
which complemented the dusting of gray above his ears, and his skin was so smooth as to
look like polished wood. He was taller than she was, but only just, yet he stared down the
length of his thin nose at her as though she were something unpleasant he was about to
tread in.
She stared back at him enquiringly, not sure, for once in her life, what to say.
Aran stepped silently to his daughter's side. "Is there something I can help you with?"
he asked.