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

Tarma groaned, then, and Kethry laughed. “Oh, Warrl has a mind of his own,” the mage had an-
swered, “I had been the one doing the calling, but he made the decision. He decided that I didn’t
need him, and Tarma did.”
“So besides your formidable talents, I get three recruits, not two; three used to teamworking. No
commander in her right mind would argue with that.” Idra then stood up, and pushed papers
across her desk to them. “Sign those, my friends, if you’re still so minded, and you’ll be
Sunhawks before the ink dries.”
So it had been. Now Tarma was subcommander of the scouts, and Keth was in charge of the
motley crew concerned with Healing and magery—two hedge-mages, a field-surgeon and
herbalist and his two apprentices, and a Healing Priest of Shayana. “Priestess” would have been
a more accurate title, but the Shayana’s devotees did not make any gen-der differences in their
rankings, which ofttimes confused someone who expected one sex and got the opposite. Tresti
was handfasted to Sewen, Idra’s Second, a weathered, big-boned, former trooper;
that sometimes caused Keth sleepless nights. She wondered what would happen if it was ever
Sewen carried in through the door flap of the infirmary, but the possibility never seemed to
bother Tresti.
Tarma and Kethry had fought in two intense campaigns, each lasting barely a season; this was
their third, and it had been brutal from the start. But then, that was often the case with civil war
and rebellion.
Ten moons ago, the King of Jkatha had died, declaring his Queen, Sursha, to be his successor and
Regent for their three children. Eight moons ago Sursha’s brother-in-law, Declin Lord Kelcrag,
had made a bid for the throne with his own armed might.
Lord Kelcrag was initially successful in his at-tempt, actually driving Sursha and her allies out of
the Throne City and into the provinces. But he could not eliminate them, and he had made the
mistake of assuming that defeat meant that they would vanish.
Queen Sursha had talent and wisdom—the talent to attract both loyal and capable people to her
cause, and the wisdom to know when to stand back and let them do what was needful, however
distasteful that might be to her gentle sensibilities. That talent won half the kingdom to her side;
that wisdom allowed her to pick an otherwise rough-hewn pro-vincial noble, Havak Lord
Leamount, as her General-in-Chief and led her to give him her full and open support even when
his decisions were personally repugnant to her.
General Lord Leamount levied or begged troops from every source he could—and then hired spe’
cialists to till in the skill gaps his levies didn’t have.
And one of the first mercenary Captains he had approached was Idra. His troops were mostly
foot, with a generous leavening of heavy horse—no skir-mishers, no scouts, no light horse at all,
other than his own personal levy of hill-clansmen. The hillmen were mounted on rugged little
ponies; good in rough country but slow in open areas, and useless as strike-and-run skirmishers.
And by now Idra’s troops were second to none, thanks in no small part to Tarma. The Shin’a’in
had seen no reason why she could not benefit her presumptive clan’s coffers, and her new
comrades as well; she’d arranged for the Sunhawks to get first pick of the sale-horses of
Tale’sedrin. These weren’t battlesteeds, which were never let out of Shin’a’in hands, but they
weren’t culls either, which was what the Sunhawks had been seeing. And when the Hawks had
snapped up every beast she offered, she arranged for four more clans to bring in their first-pick
horses as well.
So now the Hawks were better mounted than most nobles, on horses that could be counted as
extra weapons in a close-in fight.
That fact was not lost on Lord Leamount, nor was he blind to Idra’s canny grasp of strategy. Idra
was made part of the High Command, and pretty much allowed to dictate how her Hawks were
used.
As a result, although the fighting had been vicious, the Hawks were still at something like four-