"Kay, Guy Gavriel - Last Light Of The Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

some kinds of death. Of course it could also be said that no truly
sober man would have done what he was doing now unless
claimed by a spirit himself, ghost-ridden, god-tormented.

Bern didn't think he was crazed, but he'd have acknowledged freely
that what he was doing—without having planned it at all—was not
the wisest thing he'd ever done.

He concentrated on riding. There was no good reason for anyone
to be abroad in these fields at night—farmers would be asleep
behind doors, the shepherds would have their herds farther
west—but there was always the chance of someone hoping to find
a cup of ale at some hut, or meeting a girl, or looking for some-
thing to steal.

He was stealing a dead man's horse, himself.

A warrior's vengeance would have had him kill Halldr Thinshank
long ago and face the blood feud after, beside whatever distant
kin, if any, might come to his aid. Instead, Halldr had died when the
main crossbeam of the new house he was having built (with money
that didn't belong to him) fell on his back, breaking it. And Bern had
stolen the grey horse that was to be burned with the governor
tomorrow.

It would delay the rites, he knew, disquiet the ghost of the man who
had exiled Bern's father and taken his mother as a second wife.
The man who had also, not incidentally, ordered Bern himself
bound for three years as a servant to Arni Kjellson, recompense
for his father's crime.

A young man named to servitude, with an exiled father, and so
without any supporting family or name, could not readily proclaim
himself a warrior among the Erlings unless he went so far from
home that his history was unknown. His father had probably done
that, raiding overseas again. Red-bearded, fierce-tempered,
experienced. A perfect oarsman for some longship, if he didn't kill
a benchmate in a fury, Bern thought sourly. He knew his father's
capacity for rage. Arni Kjellson's brother Nikar was dead of it.

Halldr might fairly have exiled the murderer and given away half his
land to stop a feud, but marrying the exile's wife and claiming land
for himself smacked too much of reaping in pleasure what he'd
sowed as a judge. Bern Thorkellson, an only son with two sisters
married and off the island, had found himself changed—in a blur of
time—from the heir of a celebrated raider-turned-farmer to a
landless servant without kin to protect him. Could any man wonder
if there was bitterness in him, and more than that? He'd loathed
Rabady's governor with cold passion. A hatred shared by more
than a few, if words whispered in ale were to be believed.