"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 06 - A Time Of Omens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

to begin with. And look how someone’s worked it—smoothed it, shaped it, and then polished it.”

“What?” Owaen’s sourness deepened to disgust. “What is it, some kind of knife handle?”

“It’s not, but a stylus to rule lines on parchment.”

“A stylus?” Maddyn broke in. “Who would make a thing like that out of human bone?”

“Who indeed, Maddo lad? That’s the answer I’d very much like to have: who indeed?”

In his role as a learned man Nevyn recited a few suitable lines of Dawntime poetry over the corpses;
then the silver daggers mounted up and left the servants to get on with the burying. When they rode out
they headed for the river. Maddyn spurred his horse up next to the old man’s and mentioned the decrepit
hunting lodge.

“It’ll be better shelter than none, truly,” Nevyn said.

“You don’t suppose our enemies camped there, do you?”

“They might have once, but they’re long gone by now.” He gave Maddyn a wink. “I have some rather
reliable information to that effect. Tell the men we won’t be out hunting wild geese long, Maddo. I just
want one last look around, that’s all.”

Only then was Maddyn sure that he had indeed seen some exalted personage in the stream.

Just at sunset they reached the lodge, a wooden roundhouse, its thatch half-gone, standing along with a
stables behind a palisade that was missing as many logs as a peasant his teeth. As soon as they rode
within five hundred yards of the place the horses turned nervous, tossing their heads and blowing, dancing
a little in the muddy road. Maddyn had the feeling that they would have bolted if they hadn’t been tired
from their long day’s ride.

“Oho!” Nevyn said. “My liege, you wait here with Caradoc and most of the men. Maddyn, you,
Owaen, and Branoic come with me.”

“You’d better take more men than that, Councillor,” Maryn said.

“I won’t need a small army, my liege. Most like there’s naught left here but bad memories, anyway.”

“But the horses—”

“See things men don’t see, but men know things that horses don’t know. And with that riddle, you’ll
have to rest content.”
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Nevyn was right enough, in the event, although the ‘bad memory’ turned out to be bad indeed. The men
dismounted and walked the last of the way to the lodge, and as soon as they stepped through the gap
they saw and smelled what had been spooking the animals. Nailed to the inside of the palisade, like a