"Robert Jordan - Conan 01 - The Defender" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

Conan the Defender
By Robert Jordan

PROLOGUE
Sunlight streaming through marble-arched windows illumined the tapestry-hung room. The servants,
tongueless so that they could not speak of whom they saw in their master's house, had withdrawn, leaving
five people to sip their wine in silence.

Cantaro Albanus, the host, studied his guests, toying idly with the heavy gold chain that hung across his
scarlet tunic. The lone woman pretended to study the intricate weaving of the tapestries; the men
concentrated on their winecups.

Midmorning, Albanus reflected, was exactly the time for such meetings, though it rubbed raw the nerves
of his fellows. Traditionally such were held in the dark of night by desperate men huddled in secret
chambers sealed to exclude so much as a moonbeam. Yet who would believe, who could even suspect
that a gathering of Nemedia's finest in the bright light of day, in the very heart of the capital, could be
intent on treason?

His lean-cheeked face darkened at the thought, and his black eyes became obsidian. With his hawk nose
and the slashes of silver at the temples of his dark hair, he looked as if he should have been a general. He
had indeed been a soldier, once, for a brief year. When he was but seventeen his father had obtained him
a commission in the Golden Leopards, the bodyguard regiment of Nemedian Kings since time beyond
memory. At his father's death he had resigned. Not for him working his way up the ladder of rank, no
matter how swiftly aided by high birth. Not for one who by blood and temperament should be King. For
him nothing could be treason.

"Lord Albanus," Barca Vegentius said suddenly, "we have heard much of the... special aid you bring to
our... association. We have heard much, but thus far we have seen nothing." Large and square of face
and body, the current Commander of the Golden Leopards pronounced his words carefully.

He thought to hide his origins by hiding the accents of the slums of Belverus, and was unaware that
everyone knew his deception.

"Such careful words to express your doubts, Vegentius," Demetrio Amarianus said. The slender youth
touched a perfumed pomander to his nose, but it could not hide the sneer that twisted his almost
womanly mouth. "But then you always use careful words, don't you? We all know you are here only to-"

"Enough!" Albanus snapped.

Both Demetrio and Vegentius, whose face had been growing more purple by the second, subsided like
well-trained animals at the crack of the trainer's whip. These squabbles were constant, and he tolerated
them no more than he was forced to. Today he would not tolerate them at all.
"All of you," Albanus went on, "want something. You, Vegentius, want the generalship you feel King
Garian has denied you. You, Demetrio, want the return of the estates Garian's father took from your
grandfather. And you, Sephana. You want revenge against Garian because he told you he liked his
women younger."

"As pleasantly stated as is your custom, Albanus," the lone woman said bitterly. Lady Sephana
Galerianus' heartshaped face was set with violet eyes and framed by a raven mane that hung below her
shoulders. Her red silk robe was cut to show both the inner and outer slopes of her generous breasts,