"Elizabeth Moon - Gird 01 - Surrender None" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

the swing, learned to take steps just the right length to compensate
for the blade’s arc. The next day, he spent on the same patch of
meadow. Now that he had the knack of it, he was half-hoping the
steward would not come. He would grow up a farmer like his father,
leading the reapers in the field, guiding his own oxen, growing even
better fruit…
It was the next day that the steward came at dusk, when his father had
come in from the fields, and Gird had begun to feel himself out of
disgrace as far as the family went. The children were sent to the
barton out back, while the steward talked, and his father (he was

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Elizabeth Moon - Surrender None


sure) listened. He wanted to creep into the cowbyre and hear for
himself, but Arin barred the way. He had to wait until his father
called him in.
There in the candlelight, his father’s face looked older, tireder. His
mother sat stiffly, lips pressed together, behind her loom. The
steward smiled at him. “Gird, the sergeant suggested that you were a
likely lad to train for soldier: strong and brave, and in need of
discipline. Your father will let you choose for yourself. If you agree,
you will spend one day of ten with the soldiers this year, and from
Midwinter to Midwinter next, two days of ten. It’s not soldiering at
first, I’ll be honest with you: you’ll work in the barracks just as you’d
work here. But your father’d be paid the worth of your work, a
copper crab more than for fieldwork. And the following year, you’d
be a recruit, learning warcraft, and your father will get both coppers
and a dole off his fee. ’Twould help your family, in hard times, but
your father says you must do as you wish.”
It was frightening to see his parents so still, so clearly frightened
themselves. He had never really understood them before, he felt.
Behind him, in the doorway, Arin and the others crowded; he could
hear their noisy breathing. Could soldiering be so bad as they
thought? All his life he’d seen the guardsmen strolling the village
lane, admired the glitter of their buckles, the jingle of their harness.
He’d been too young to fear the ordersticks, the clubs… he’d had
strong hands rumpling his hair, when he crowded near with the other
boys, he’d had a smile from the sergeant himself. And the soldiers
fought off brigands, and hunted wolves and folokai; he remembered
only last winter, cheering in the snow with the others as they carried
back the dead folokai tied to poles. One of them had been hurt, his
blood staining the orange tunic he wore, but the world was hard, and
there were many ways to be hurt.
He wanted to stand on one leg and think about it, but there stood the
steward, peering at him in the dimness with eyes that seemed to see
clear into his heart. He’d never spoken to a lord before, exactly. Was
the steward a lord? Close enough.
“It would not be a binding oath,” the steward said, a little