"George R. R. Martin - Ice and Fire 0.6 - The Sworn Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

“No,” said Dunk. “I’m as hot and thirsty as them.” He pointed toward the field beyond the road, where
rows of melons were shriveling on the vines. Along the verges goatheads and tufts of devilgrass still
clung to life, but the crops were not faring near as well. Dunk knew just how the melons felt. Ser Arlan
used to say that no hedge knight need ever go thirsty. “Not so long as he has a helm to catch the rain in.
Rainwater is the best drink there is, lad.” The old man never saw a summer like this one, though. Dunk
had left his helm at Standfast. It was too hot and heavy to wear, and there had been precious little rain to
catch in it.What’s a hedge knight do when even the hedges are brown and parched and dying?

Maybe when they reached the stream he’d have a soak. He smiled, thinking how good that would feel, to
jump right in and come up sopping wet and grinning, with water cascading down his cheeks and through
his tangled hair and his tunic clinging sodden to his skin. Egg might want a soak as well, though the boy
looked cool and dry, more dusty than sweaty. He never sweated much. He liked the heat. In Dorne he
went about bare-chested, and turned brown as a Dornishman.It is his dragon blood, Dunk told himself.
Whoever heard of a sweaty dragon? He would gladly have pulled his own tunic off, but it would not be
fitting. A hedge knight could ride bare naked if he chose; he had no one to shame but himself. It was
different when your sword was sworn.When you accept a lord’s meat and mead, all you do reflects on
him, Ser Arlan used to say.Always do more than he expects of you, never less. Never flinch at any task or
hardship. And above all, never shame the lord you serve. At Standfast, “meat and mead” meant chicken
and ale, but Ser Eustace ate the same plain fare himself.

Dunk kept his tunic on, and sweltered.




Ser Bennis of the Brown Shield was waiting at the old plank bridge. “So you come back,” he called out.
“You were gone so long I thought you run off with the old man’s silver.” Bennis was sitting on his
shaggy garron, chewing a wad of sourleaf that made it look as if his mouth were full of blood.

“We had to go all the way to Dosk to find some wine,” Dunk told him. “The krakens raided Little Dosk.
They carried off the wealth and women and burned half of what they did not take.”

“That Dagon Greyjoy wants for hanging,” Bennis said. “Aye, but who’s to hang him? You see old
Pinchbottom Pate?”



file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/George%20R%20R%20M...nd%20%20Fire%200.6%20-%20The%20Sworn%20Sword.html (5 of 78)16-2-2006 15:48:57
 Legends II

“They told us he was dead. The ironmen killed him when he tried to stop them taking off his daughter.”

“Seven bloody hells.” Bennis turned his head and spat. “I seen that daughter once. Not worth dying for,
you ask me. That fool Pate owed me half a silver.” The brown knight looked just as he had when they
left; worse, he smelled the same as well. He wore the same garb every day: brown breeches, a shapeless
roughspun tunic, horsehide boots. When armored he donned a loose brown surcoat over a shirt of rusted
mail. His swordbelt was a cord of boiled leather, and his seamed face might have been made of the same
thing.His head looks like one of those shriveled melons that we passed. Even his teeth were brown,
under the red stains left by the sourleaf he liked to chew. Amidst all that brownness, his eyes stood out;