"Frankowski,.Leo.-.Conrad.Starguard.4.-.Flying.Warlord" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

Only it wasn't a buck I shot! It was a stuffed dummy with a deer
skin on it, and the baron's men, they had me surrounded before I
knew what was happening. They stole my boat and cargo,
"confiscated" it, they called it, and I never did see it again. They
would have hung me except I had that letter, written on good
calfskin vellum it was, with Count Lambert's seal on it.

The baron said he wasn't about to offend a lord as high as Count
Lambert, not without finding out what that man would pay for my
life. They was all eating and drinking while I was tied up in front of
them, and every round of wine they drank, they'd decide on a
higher price for my ransom. By the time they was near dead drunk,
they had this priest write up a letter to Count Lambert saying that if
he didn't come up with four thou sand pence in six weeks, they'd
hang me for poaching, and I knew I was a dead man. I'd never
seen that much money in one spot in my whole life, and the count
didn't even know me. Who'd spend a fortune to save a man they'd
never even met?

So they chained me with shackles riveted around my wrists and
ankles and threw me into this tiny cell in the basement, with barely
room to lay down. The only food I got was some table scraps
every third day or so and they was stingy with the water. They
wouldn't even give me a pot to piss in, and I had to piss and shit on
the floor of my cell. But that whole castle stank so bad that they
didn't even notice the stench I added. In a month's time, I was
covered with my own shit, and being hung didn't seem like such a
bad thing after all. At least then I could stop smelling myself!

Then along comes Sir Conrad, all decked out in red velvet and
gold trim, with good armor under it. There was another knight with
him, Sir Vladimir, and two of the prettiest girls you've ever seen,
Annastashia and Krystyana. He paid out four thousand pence in
silver coin and got my bow and arrows back, too, but I had no such
luck with my boat and cargo.

A blacksmith knocked the shackles off me and it was strange to
stand there in the bright sun with clean air to breathe, trying to make
myself understand that I was going to get to live again.

Sir Conrad said I owed him four thousand pence, and I'd pay it off
by working for him at three pence a day, the same pay that I'd
given him the last fall. That was five ' years pay, even if I saved
every penny of it, and many's the time I wished I'd paid him the six
pence a day he'd asked for in the first place, instead of dickering
him and the priest down to something reasonable.

They all stayed upwind of me until we got to an inn, and the
innkeeper wouldn't let me inside until they'd given me a bath in the