"Robin Hobb - Soldier Son 01 - Shaman's Crossing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

black, with long straight legs and jingle charms braided into his
mane. I watched him with intent interest. Scouts were a breed apart,
it was said. They were ranked as officers, lieutenants usually and
frequently were nobly born, but they lived independent lives,
outside the regular ranks of the military and often reported directly

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Shaman's Crossing - Robin Hobb - Soldier Son 01


to the commander of an outpost. They were our first harbingers of
any trouble, be it logjams on the river, eroding roads or unrest
among the plains-people.
A girl of twelve or thirteen on a chestnut gelding followed the scout.
It was a smaller animal with a finely sculptured brow that spoke of
the best nomadic stock. She rode astraddle as no proper Gernian girl
would, and by that as much as by her garb I knew her for a mixed
blood. It was not uncommon, though still deplored, for Gernian
soldiers to take wives from among the plainspeople. It was less
common for a scout to stoop so low. I stared at the girl in frank
curiosity. My mother often said that the products of cross-unions
were abominations before the good god, so I was surprised to see
that such a long and ugly-sounding word described such a lovely
creature. She was dressed in brightly layered skirts, one orange, one
green, one yellow, that blossomed over the horse’s back and
covered her knees, but not her calves and feet. She wore soft little
boots of antelope skin, and silver charms twinkled on their laces.
Loose white trousers showed beneath her bunched skirts. Her
shorter kaffiyeh matched her father’s and displayed to advantage the
long brown hair that hung down her back in dozens of fine braids.
She had a high, round brow and calm grey eyes. Her white blouse
bared her neck and arms, displaying the black torc she wore around
her throat and a quantity of bracelets, some stacked above her
elbows and others jingling at her wrist. She wore the woman’s
wealth of her family proudly for all to see. Her naked arms were
brown from the sun and as muscled as a boy’s. As she rode, she
looked round boldly, very unlike my sisters’ modest manner and


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Shaman's Crossing - Robin Hobb - Soldier Son 01


downcast eyes when in public.
Her stare met mine, and we exchanged looks of honest appraisal.
She had probably never seen a noble’s soldier son, and I stood a bit
straighter, well aware that I was finely turned out in my dark green
trousers and crisp blouse and black boots, and especially so in the
company of the ragged street-jay boys. I was not so young that the
attention of a girl was not flattering. Looking back, perhaps it