"Mercedes Lackey - Vows and Honor 2 - Oathbreaker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

One
It was a dark and stormy night. ...
:Pah!: Warrl said with disgust so thick Tarma could taste it. :MMS( you even think in cliches’?:
Tarma took her bearings during another flash of lightning, tried and failed to make out Warrl’s
shaggy bulk against watery blackness, then thought back at him, Well it is, danmit!
Tarma shena Tale’sedrin, who was Shin’a’in nomad, Kal’enedral (or, to outClansmen, a “Sword-
sworn”), and most currently Scoutmaster for the mercenary company called “Idra’s Sunhawks”
was not particularly happy at this moment. She was sleet-drenched, cold and numb, and mired to
her armpits; as was her companion, the lupine kyree Warrl. The Sunhawks’ camp was black as
the in-side of a box at midnight, for all it was scarcely an hour past sunset. Her hair was plastered
flat to her skull, and trickles of icy water kept running into her eyes. She couldn’t even feel the
ends of her ringers anymore. Her feet hurt, her joints ached, her nose felt so frozen it was like to
fall off, and her teeth were chattering hard enough to splinter. She was not pleased, having to
stumble around in the dark and freezing rain to find the tent she shared with her partner and
oathbound sister, the White Winds sorceress, Kethry.
The camp was dark out of necessity; even in a downpour sheltered fires would normally burn in
the firepits in front of each tent, or a slow-burning torch would be staked out in the lee of every
fourth, but that was impossible tonight. You simply couldn’t keep a fire lit when the wind howled
at you from directions that changed moment by moment, driv-ing the rain before it; and torches
under canvas were a danger even the most foolhardy would forgo. A few of the Sunhawks had
lanterns or candles going in their tents; but the weather was foul enough that most preferred to go
straight to sleep when not on duty. It was too plaguey cold and wet to be sociable. For heat, most
stuck to the tiny charcoal braziers Idra had insisted they each pack at the beginning of this
campaign. The Sunhawks had known their Captain too well to argue about (what had seemed at
the time) a silly burden; now they were grateful for her foresight.
But with the rain coming down first in cascades, then in waterways, Tarma couldn’t see the faint
glow of candles or lanterns shining through the canvas walls that would have told her where the
tents were. So she slogged her way through the camp mostly by memory and was herself grateful
to Idra for insisting on an orderly camp, laid out neatly, in proper rows. and not the hugger-
mugger arrange-ment some of the other mere officers were allow-ing. At least she wasn’t tripping
over tent ropes or falling into firepits.
:I can smell Keth and magic,: Warrl said into her mind. .-You should see the mage-light soon.:
“Thanks, Furball,” Tarma replied, a little more mollified; she knew he wouldn’t hear her over the
howl of the wind, but he’d read the words in her mind. She kept straining her eyes through the
tem-pest for a sight of the witchlight Keth had prom-ised to leave at the front—to distinguish
their tent from the two hundred odd just like it.
They were practically on top of it before she saw the light, a blue glow outlining the door flap
and brightening the fastenings. She wrestled with the balky rawhide ties (the cold made her
fingers stiff) and it took so long to get them unfastened that she was swearing enough to warm
the whole camp be-fore she had the tent flaps open. Having Warrl pressed up against her like a
sodden* unhappy cat did not help.
The wind practically threw Tarma into the tent, and half the sleet that was knifing down on their
camp tried to come in with her. Warrl remained plastered against her side, not at all helpful,
smell-ing in the pungent, penetrating way only a wet wolf can smell—even if Warrl only
resembled a wolf superficially. The kyree was not averse to reminding Tarma several times a day
(as, in fact, he was doing now) that they could have been curled up in a cozy inn if they hadn’t
signed on with this mercenary company.
She turned her back to the occupant of the tent as soon as she got past the tent flaps; she needed
all her attention to get them laced shut against the perverse pull of the wind. “Gods of
damnation!” she spat through stiff lips, “Why did I ever think this was a good idea?”