"01 - Watchtower [v4.0]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lynn Elizabeth A)

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Watchtower
by Elizabeth A. Lynn
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Copyright (c)1979 by Elizabeth A. Lynn


e-reads
www.ereads.com

Fantasy
Winner of the World Fantasy Award

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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.
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Other works by Elizabeth A. Lynn also availabe in e-reads editions
The Northern Girl
The Dancers of Arun
The Sardonyx Net
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The land of Arun is a fictional place, and its people, culture, and customs bear only inadvertent resemblance to people and histories of our world, with one exception. The art of the chearis, as it is described, resembles in some aspects the Japanese martial art _aikido_, created by Master Morihei Uyeshiba. This imitation is deliberate. Writers must write what they know. In gratitude for that knowledge, the author respectfully wishes to thank her teachers.
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*one*
Tornor Keep was dead and burning.
Ryke's face was soot-stained, and his wrists were skinned raw where he had torn them twisting in his chains. His head ached. He was not sure of what he'd seen and not seen happen. He lay in the inner courtyard. He could see a plume of smoke from the outer wall, where Col Istor's sappers had breached it and pulled it down. He smelled the smoke of a nearer burning. Behind him, in the great hall, something was in flames.
Athor, lord of the Keep, was dead, long beard bloody from the wounds he'd taken. Ryke had seen him fall, and in the haze of the fight had expected Tornor castle and tower and walls to waver and fall with him in the shock ... But it had not happened. The walls were still there. All the men of Ryke's watch were dead. They lay outside the gates they had died defending, frozen into the uncaring snow. Ryke pictured the women from the village coming in spring to dig the bodies of their husbands and sons from the loosening ground.
He was light-headed. He curled into the stone, wondering how many other men of Tornor were still alive, and what Col Istor planned to do with them -- with him. He had expected to die with the men of his watch. He still expected to die. He did not want to, but it was hard to summon up a will to live with Athor dead, with the balance broken, the order of things spoiled. He wondered if Col Istor had had him dragged inside and chained in order to make an example of him. The stone was rough beneath his cheek. He shivered. From somewhere in the great square Keep he heard the sound of chickens cackling, and the voices of the women rounding them up. The winter had just begun, two weeks back, and he was not yet cold-hardened. The second big snow had ceased that night. No, he thought muzzily, the snow stopped two nights ago...
Fitfully, between shivers, he slept. He woke trying to roll away. Someone had kicked him in the side.
He looked up. Framed against the blue winter sky, Col Istor stood over him: black hair, black beard, a fat swarthy southerner's face.
"We just got the fire out," he said to Ryke casually, as if he were talking to a friend, not a chained and defeated enemy. "Those crazed people set the kitchen on fire rather than surrender." He squatted. He wore mail and a long-sword. His iron helmet looked like an old pot. He smelled of ash. "You warm enough?"
"Too close!" said someone sharply from behind him.
"Shut up." He was thick-shouldered, a bulky man. His dark eyes inspected Ryke as if the watch commander were a goat marked for slaughter. "You fight well," he said. "You're not really hurt, are you? No wounds except that head knock. It saved your life. No broken bones. You're young. You're better off than your lord."
Slowly Ryke sat up. He considered hitting the man with the chain around his hands, but he did not have the strength left in his arms to swing the heavy iron cuffs. "Athor's dead."
Col Istor chuckled. "I don't mean the old one," he said. "I mean the young one, the prince."
"Errel?" Ryke blinked. The smoke stung his eyes. He had not slept in two days, his head was thick. He scooped up a handful of snow and rubbed his face, trying to think. Errel, Athor's only son and heir, had been out hunting when Col and his soldiers appeared at the Keep five days ago. He had not come back. Athor and the commanders had assumed him safe. Ryke had hoped so, very much. "He's out of your reach."
"He's among us," said Col Istor. Standing, he beckoned to the man at his back. "Get him on his feet."
That man stepped forward and dragged Ryke up. He had big ungentle hands. Ryke leaned against the wall until his legs stopped shaking. Col watched him with detached interest. The man did not look like a warlord. Everyone knew that war came from the north. It was born in rock, and it toughened in the constant strife, now at truce, between Arun and the country yet farther north, Anhard-over-mountain. Athor of Tornor, watchful for signs of the Anhard raiders, had paid no heed to the rumors that reached the Keep through the southern traders, about a mercenary chieftain rising out of the peaceful farms of Arun, the shining golden grainfields, the Galbareth. Yet this man had warred on wartrained Tornor in winter, and won.
"Bring him," Col ordered.
They walked across the inner ward to the gate. Ryke had trouble in the slippery snow. The cold wind half revived him. Col's army was all around in the bright sunlight, cleaning up the castle. There was a line of corpses stacked against a wall. Most wore battle gear, but one still wore a leather cook's apron. There was no way to tell which of the cooks it was.
Once Ryke fell. They waited until he struggled up, and went on.
They went through the inner gatehouse, under the iron teeth of the portcullis. Guards stood at attention. Several of them wore spoil marked with the fire-emblem of Zilia Keep, the easternmost of the Keeps, three days ride from Tornor. Ryke did not know what had happened to Ocel, lord of that castle, and to his family. He had a big family. Probably they were dead. More guards swarmed in the outer ward, between the walls. One carried an armful of spent arrows. He held them by the quill end, spoiling the set of the fletch. Southerners knew naught of shooting. Ryke wondered if the Keep could have held out longer with more arrows. The Keep's fletchers had kept the castle supplied with hunting shafts. But since the making of the truce they had more or less ceased crafting war arrows.
He decided it would not have mattered.
Over the wall, Athor's banners snapped in the wind, a red eight-pointed star on a white-field. As Ryke watched, a small dark figure wormed up the pole and cut the banner down. Ryke looked away, aware that Col was watching him. The cuffs dragged painfully at his wrists. They walked along the south wall. The dog cage sat in the sun at the foot of the watchtower. It was a small stockade with a linen awning shading it. Athor had built it for his wolfhound bitch and her pups. There were no dogs in it now. Errel lay sprawled across the dung-spattered stone, covered by a filthy blanket. His face was blue with cold and cut up about the mouth. His eyes were closed. Only the steady rise and fall of his chest told Ryke that he was living.
"He doesn't look like much," said the man whose name Ryke didn't know.
Col Istor said, "My men found him on the west road, heading toward Cloud Keep. He killed four of them with that long bow of his. But he's whipped now."
Ryke wanted to wrap both hands around Col's thick neck. "What do you want?" he asked.