"Robin Hobb - Soldier Son 01 - Shaman's Crossing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)
Shaman's Crossing - Robin Hobb - Soldier Son 01
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CHAPTER ONE
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Magic and Iron
I remember well the first time I saw the magic of the plainspeople.
I was eight and my father had taken me with him on a trip to the
outpost on Franner’s Bend. We had arisen before the dawn for the
long ride; the sun was just short of standing at noon when we finally
saw the flag waving over the walls of the outpost by the river. Once,
between the plainspeople and the expanding Kingdom of Gernia.
Now it was well within the Gernian border, but some of its old
martial glory persisted. Two great cannons guarded the gates, but
the trade stalls set up against the mud-plastered stockade walls
behind them dimmed their ferocity. The trail we had followed from
Widevale now joined a road that picked its way among the remains
of mud-brick foundations. Their roofs and walls were long gone,
leaving the shells gaping at the sky like empty tooth sockets in a
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Shaman's Crossing - Robin Hobb - Soldier Son 01
skull. I looked at them curiously as we passed, and dared a question.
“Who used to live here?”
“Plainspeople,” Corporal Parth said. His tone said that was his full
reply. Rising early did not suit his temperament, and I suspected
already that he blamed me for having to get out of bed so early.
I held my tongue for a time, but then the questions burst out of me
‘Why are all the houses broken and gone? Why did they leave? I
thought the plainspeople didn’t have towns. Was this a plains-
people town?”
“Plainspeople don’t have towns, they left because they left, and the
houses are broken because the plainspeople didn’t know how to
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