"George R. R. Martin - The Hedge Knight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

bridles too, I’d come away with enough silver to. . . Dunk frowned. The only life he knew was the life of
a hedge knight, riding from keep to keep, taking service with this lord and that lord, fighting in their
battles and eating in their halls until the war was done, then moving on. There were tourneys from time to
time as well, though less often, and he knew that some hedge knights turned robber during lean winters,
though the old man never had.

I could find another hedge knight in need of a squire to tend his animals and clean his mail, he thought, or
might be I could go to some city, to Jannisport or King’s Landing, and join the City Watch. Or else . . .

He had piled the old man’s things under an oak. The cloth purse contained three silver stags, nineteen
copper pennies, and a chipped garnet; as with most hedge knights, the greatest part of his worldly wealth
had been tied up in his horses and weapons. Dunk now owned a chain-mail hauberk that he had scoured
the rust off a thousand times. An iron halfhelm with a broad nasal and a dent on the left temple. A sword
belt of cracked brown leather, and a longsword in a wood-and-leather scabbard. A dagger, a razor, a
whetstone. Greaves and gorget, an eight-foot war lance of turned ash topped by a cruel iron point, and
an oaken shield with a scarred metal rim, bearing the sigil of Ser Arlan of Pennytree: a winged chalice,
silver on brown.

Dunk looked at the shield, scooped up the sword belt, and looked at the shield again. The belt was made
for the old man’s skinny hips. It would never do for him, no more than the hauberk would. He tied the
scabbard to a length of hempen rope, knotted it around his waist, and drew the longsword.

The blade was straight and heavy, good castle-forged steel, the grip soft leather wrapped over wood, the
pommel a smooth polished black stone. Plain as it was, the sword felt good in his hand, and Dunk knew
how sharp it was, having worked it with whetstone and oilcloth many a night before they went to sleep. It
fits my grip as well as it ever fit his, he thought to himself, and there is a tourney at Ashford Meadow.


Sweetfoot had an easier gait than old Chestnut, but Dunk was still sore and tired when he spied the inn
ahead, a tall daub-and-timber building beside a stream. The warm yellow light spilling from its windows
looked so inviting that he could not pass it by. I have three silvers, he told himself, enough for a good
meal and as much ale as I care to drink. As he dismounted, a naked boy emerged dripping from the
stream and began to dry himself on a roughspun brown cloak. “Are you the stableboy?” Dunk asked
him. The lad looked to be no more than eight or nine, a pasty-faced skinny thing, his bare feet caked in
mud up to the ankle. His hair was the queerest thing about him. He had none.

“I’ll want my palfrey rubbed down. And oats for all three. Can you tend to them?”

The boy looked at him brazenly. “I could. If I wanted.”

Dunk frowned. “I’ll have none of that. I am a knight, I’ll have you know.”

“You don’t look to be a knight.”

“Do all knights look the same?”

“No, but they don’t look like you, either. Your sword belt’s made of rope.”

“So long as it holds my scabbard, it serves. Now see to my horses. You’ll get a copper if you do well,
and a clout in the ear if you don’t.” He did not wait to see how the stableboy took that, but turned away