"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Darwath.5.-.Icefalcons.Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)
The sonorous words flowed from her tongue like the magic speech of wizards, and her face seemed to grow longer and thinner, a different set to the mouth than Hethya's broad grin, the hazel eyes unsparkling, cold as a priestess'. "The girl Hethya, Uranwe's Daughter, is here with me also, but I am here, I, Oale Niu; here in this place where I stood three thousand years ago, and I will not be slighted."
The men who had come up behind Lord Vair murmured among themselves, and one or two bowed their heads.
After a moment Lord Vair inclined his, just slightly, as well. "I meant no disrespect, Lady," he said. "And indeed I apologize for the clumsiness of my tongue. The apparatus you instructed us in worked well, as you see."
He signed toward the men gathered around the wagons at the foot of the slope. It was a little difficult for Tir at first because all were strangers to him, bald and without facial hair of any kind, and he was not used to the sight of so many black faces, but he realized that many of them had the same features, like the Akulae.
A word came to his mind unbidden, from the dark hollow of memory: tethyn. They were called tethyn. And there was something awful about them-or about it-something that made him feel sick inside, something he didn't want to know.
"I trust that the other apparatus will function as well."
"How many things function as once they did, with the passage of years?" She looked him coldly up and down and spoke in the voice of Oale Niu, strange coming from Hethya's lush mouth. "Not men, certainly, nor the bodies of men. But the machines we built in the ancient days are wrought of power and adamant," she went on, as if she did not see Lord Vair's face cloud with anger. "They will do as they were made to do, my Lord. Be sure of it."
On these words she turned her back on him and strode serenely off into the woods, swallowed up by the shadows of the trees, leaving Tir alone.
Vair flicked his left hand-Tir noticed already that he kept his hooks low at his side or hidden within his sleeve or the folds of his white woolen cloak. "Set the camp. Nargois, Bektis . . ."
The sorcerer stepped closer, as did another man, tall like Lord Vair, extravagantly mustachioed and cloaked like him in white, his clothing adorned with ribbons and jewels of rank. "Let's see the brat."
Tir wanted to shrink back and conceal himself behind the tree but knew it wouldn't do any good. Besides, it wasn't brave. When Vair, Nargois, and Bektis were halfway across the clearing to him he was swept by a wave of dread that this awful lord would know all about Akula's knife hidden in his boot.
He looked away, trying to breathe, and the next moment Lord Vair's iron fingers in their white leather glove had his chin in a grip like a machine, forcing his head up.
For a moment Tir looked into those honey eyes and saw in them worse things than he'd ever known in his life.
Then, very deliberately, Vair released his chin and struck him across the face, hard enough to knock him down. Tir fell, crying out with shock and pain, and the silver hooks flickered out of their concealment, catching Tir's sleeve and ripping the flesh of his shoulder underneath as they pulled him to his feet again.
Vair slapped him twice more, Tir sobbing but too terrified to cry. The hooks pulled him to his feet again and then jerked free of his sleeve, Vair's left hand grabbing his collar while the hooks on their ivory stump whipped around and slashed across his face, opening the flesh from temple to cheekbone in a single vicious swipe.
Tir screamed in pain, and Vair shook him, his head jerking back and forth, his breath strangled in the twist of his collar and his neck half broken by the man's strength. Then Vair caught the hooks in his face again, less than a finger-breadth from the corner of his eye.
"Listen to me, little boy," said that cold grating voice, and Tir, weeping in terror and feeling as if he were going to faint or wet himself, stared up into those vulpine eyes. "Do you know how easy it would be for me to pull half the flesh off your face? So that it flaps back and forth like a pancake?"
He shook him, only a gentle wobble this time, but horrible as a blow. "Or to dig out one of your eyes? You'll only need one for the job you're going to do for me. Nod your head."
Blank with fear, Tir nodded, and felt the metal pull in his flesh. With a movement of his wrist Vair freed the hooks and shoved Tir facedown on the grass.
With his hands still tied behind him, he couldn't break his fall. His face felt as if it had puffed up to the size of his head, the air like cold metal against the pouring heat of his blood. He lay crying, not daring to look up or move or breathe. Something shoved at his chin, hard.
Above him the cold voice said, "Now kiss my boot, and tell me that you love me."
Tir had to wriggle forward on his shoulders, sobbing so hard he could barely speak. "I love you," he made himself say and kissed the leather. It was cold and smooth and smelled of wax and old blood.
Vair kicked him. "Say it so I can hear you."
"I love you." He had to do it right. He had to do it right or this man would kill him.
"I love you!" screamed Tir, and bunched himself together, knees to his tucked-down chin, sobbing.
Vair kicked him again and walked away; Tir could hear the scrunch of his boots on the trampled grass. "Fix that cut," he heard him say. "Then see me in the wagon."
Bektis came over, pushed him upright against the sycamore trunk, and very quickly smeared salve on Tir's face, as if the injury were somehow Tir's fault.
He pushed the edges of the two lines of cut flesh together and wrapped a bandage around Tir's head, but he worked very fast: "Stop crying," he ordered, "lest my Lord return and make you cry in good earnest."
He hastened away to the wagon. Later, when he thought about it, Tir realized Bektis must be almost as afraid of Lord Vair as he was. Now he only put the uninjured side of his face against the tree trunk and cried.
Boots crunched the grass again and Tir whirled in nauseated terror. It was Hethya, dropping to her knees beside him and gathering him in her arms. There was another man behind her, one of the black warriors, a young man as big as a tree.
"He all right, Lady?" He held out a gourd of water.
"I think so. Thank you, laddy-buck." She took the water, held Tir close against her. He buried his head against her breasts, wanting to hide himself in her body, wanting to be a baby again and be taken care of, wanting to be dead. He heard the water from the gourd drip on the grass and wondered if they'd beat him if he didn't drink it or say thank you.
"I got these." The young man's voice had the same inflection as Akula's, awkward over the tongue of the Wathe. "Dates, understand? Dates?"
He felt Hethya move, reaching, and heard the warm smile in her voice. "Thank you."
"My own father, he beat me. Bad. But not like that." There was a clumsy pause, and Tir felt the man's rough fingers touch him very gently on the hair. Then the grass crunched again as the young soldier walked away.
Tir curled himself into a ball, trying to make himself as small and impervious as an apple seed, and cried until he fell asleep.
?Chapter 10
They harnessed the wagons with the first of morning light and traveled north.
The Icefalcon, who had seen the furs and quilting, the snowshoes and ice axes packed among the stores, was not surprised. "They journey to where the land is cold, o my enemy," he said, from the bison wallow south of the road where he and Cold Death had joined Loses His Way shortly before sunset.
"With your permission, when they have passed from sight we will visit your kin again in the coulee and see what other clothing they can lend."
But as the wagons drew close to the coulee Lord Vair raised his arm and called a halt, and the Icefalcon saw men descend into the bottomlands and presently return dragging and carrying the swollen, crow-gouged bodies of the slain.
"What hunting is this?" rumbled Loses His Way, and Yellow Eyed Dog, lying beside him with his nose between his paws, pricked his ears at the anger in the man's voice.
"Cold hunting for us." Icefalcon propped his chin on his crossed wrists. He had shaved that morning, but after six nights sleeping on the ground could have done with a long soak in the baths on first level south, or a session in one of the sweathouses at the winter steadings of his people. "I for one am not eager to try to slip into their camp, within my body or out of it, to borrow furs."
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