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

their trades... as did the whores and cutpurses. Dunk kept a wary hand on his coin.

When he caught the smell of sausages sizzling over a smoky fire, his mouth began to water. He bought
one with a copper from his pouch, and a horn of ale to wash it down. As he ate he watched a painted
wooden knight battle a painted wooden dragon. The puppeteer who worked the dragon was good to
watch too; a tall drink of water, with the olive skin and black hair of Dorne. She was slim as a lance with
no breasts to speak of, but Dunk liked her face and the way her fingers made the dragon snap and slither
at the end of its strings. He would have tossed the girl a copper if he’d had one to spare, but just now he
needed every coin.

There were armorers among the merchants, as he had hoped. A Tyroshi with a forked blue beard was
selling ornate helms, gorgeous fantastical things wrought in the shapes of birds and beasts and chased
with gold and silver. Elsewhere he found a swordmaker hawking cheap steel blades, and another whose
work was much finer, but it was not a sword he lacked.

The man he needed was all the way down at the end of the row, a shirt of fine chain mail and a pair of
lobstered steel gauntlets displayed on the table before him. Dunk inspected them closely. “You do good
work,” he said.

“None better.” A stumpy man, the smith was no more than five feet tall, yet wide as Dunk about the
chest and arms. He had a black beard, huge hands, and no trace of humility.

“I need armor for the tourney,” Dunk told him. “A suit of good mail, with gorget, greaves, and
greathelm.” The old man’s halfhelm would fit his head, but he wanted more protection for his face than a
nasal bar alone could provide.

The armorer looked him up and down. “You’re a big one, but I’ve armored bigger.” He came out from
behind the table. “Kneel, I want to measure those shoulders. Aye, and that thick neck o’ yours.” Dunk
knelt. The armorer laid a length of knotted rawhide along his shoulders, grunted, slipped it about his
throat, grunted again. “Lift your arm. No, the right.” He grunted a third time. “Now you can stand.” The
inside of a leg, the thickness of his calf, and the size of his waist elicited further grunts. “I have some
pieces in me wagon that might do for you,” the man said when he was done. “Nothing prettied up with
gold nor silver, mind you, just good steel, strong and plain. I make helms that look like helms, not winged
pigs and queer foreign fruits, but mine will serve you better if you take a lance in the face.”

“That’s all I want,” said Dunk. “How much?”

“Eight hundred stags, for I’m feeling kindly.”

“Eight hundred?” It was more than he had expected. “I... I could trade you some old armor, made for a
smaller man. . . a halfhelm, a mail hauberk...”

“Steely Pate sells only his own work,” the man declared, “but it might be I could make use of the metal.
If it’s not too rusted, I’ll take it and armor you for six hundred.”

Dunk could beseech Pate to give him the armor on trust, but he knew what sort of answer that request
would likely get. He had traveled with the old man long enough to learn that merchants were notoriously
mistrustful of hedge knights, some of whom were little better than robbers. “I’ll give you two silvers now,
and the armor and the rest of the coin on the morrow.”