"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 07 - A Time Of War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

seen a thing. He was sure, as he thought about it, that he’d seen no one but Verrarc, sitting by a stream.

By the time he’d filled the damp basket with herbs, he’d forgotten the councilman’s name, and by the
time he was heading home, all he retained was a sense of fear, linked to the grassy bank of some stream
or other. A snake, perhaps, had startled him; dimly he could remember a sound much like the hiss of a
snake.

Although there were a scattering of villages farther west, Cerr Cawnen was the only town worthy of the
name in that part of the world, the Rhiddaer (the Freeland), as it was known. In the midst of water
meadows lay Loc Vaed, stretching in long green shallows out to blue deeper water and a rocky central
island, the Citadel, where stood the fine homes of the best families and, at the very peak, the armoury of
the citizen militia. The rest of the town crammed into the shallows: a jumble and welter of houses and
shops all perched on pilings or crannogs, joined by little bridges to one another in the rough equivalent of
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




city blocks, which in turn bristled with jetties and rickety stairs leading down to the stretches of open
water between them, where leather coracles bobbed on ropes. Toward the edge of town, where the lake
rippled over sandy reefs, big logs, sawn in half and sunk on end, studded the surface of the water and
served as stepping-stones between the huts and islets. On the lake shore proper, where the ground was
reasonably solid, stood a high timber-laced stone wall, ringing the entire lake round. Guards stood on
constant duty at the gate and prowled the catwalk above, turning the entire town and lake both into an
armed camp. The forty thousand folk of Ccrr Cawnen had more than one enemy to fear.

It was late in the day by the time Jahdo trotted through the gates to the stretch of grass that ringed the
shore, and he knew he’d best hurry. Not only did the memory of his fear still trouble him, but he was
worried about his elder sister, who’d woken that morning doubled over with pain. Clutching his basket
tight, he jumped his way across the shallows from log to log, then elimbed some stairs up to a block of
buildings, all roofed with living sod or vegetable gardens. Most of the stilt-houses had wide wooden
decks round them, and he leapt or clambered from one to another, dodging dogs and goats and small
children, ducking under wet laundry hung to dry, calling out a pleasant word here or there to a woman
grinding grain in a quern or a man fishing from a window of his house. At the edge of the deeper water he
climbed down and helped himself to a coracle tied to a piling. These little round boats were common
property, used as needed, left for the next person wherever one landed them. With his basket settled
between his knees, Jahdo rowed out to Citadel.

Normally, poor folk like him and his family never lived on the central island, but his clan had occupied
two big rooms attached to the town granaries for over a hundred years, ever since the Town Council had
chartered the lodgings to them - on condition, of course, that they ‘did work most diligently and with all
care and patience both of man and weasel’ to keep down the swarms of rats in the granary. Everyone
knew that rodents were dangerous enemies, spreading filth and fleas, befouling much more food than they
outright ate. To earn their food, clothing, and other necessities, the Ratters, as their family came to be
known, also took their ferrets round from house to house all over town. Wearing little muzzles to keep
them from making kills, the ferrets chased the vermin out through holes in the walls, where the family
caught the rats in wicker cages and drowned them and their fleas both in the lake - not the most pleasant
of jobs, but growing up with it made it tolerable.

The squat stone buildings of the public granaries clung to a cliff low down on the citadel island. Getting to