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

impatiently. Gird knew that tone; his father had it when he asked who
had left the barton wicket open. It meant a quick answer, or trouble.
“If you did not like it, you could quit before you started the real

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Elizabeth Moon - Surrender None


training…”
Gird ducked his head, and then looked up at the steward. From one
corner of his vision he could see his father’s rigid face, but he
ignored it.
“Sir… steward… I would be glad to. If my father allows.”
“He has said it.” The steward smiled, then. “Dorthan, your son Gird
is accepted into service of the Count Kelaive, and here is the pirik—”
The bargain-sum, Gird remembered: not a price paid, as if he were a
sheep, but a sum to mark the conclusion of any bargain. The price
was somewhat else.
The very next morning, Gird left at dawn to walk through the village
to the count’s guards’ barracks. None of his friends were out to watch
him, but he knew they would be impressed. The guard at the gate
admitted him, sent him straight across the forecourt to the barracks.
The guards were just getting up, and the sergeant was crosser than
Gird remembered.
“Get in the kitchen first, and serve the food; then you can clean for
the cooks until after morning drill. I’ll see you then. Hop, now.”
The porridge was much like their own, if cooked in larger pots and
served in bigger bowls. Gird carried the dirty bowls back, and
scrubbed them, under the cook’s critical eye, then scrubbed the big
cookpots. Then it was chop the onions, while his eyes burned and
watered, and chop the redroots until his hands were cramped, and
then fetch buckets of clean water. All the while the cook scolded,
worse than his oldest sister, while mixing and kneading the dough
that would be dumplings in the midday stew. The sergeant came in
while Gird was still washing down the long tables. “Right, lad. Now
let’s see what we’ve got, here. Come along.” He led Gird out the side
door of the kitchen, into a back court, a little walled enclosure like a
barton with no byres. In one corner was the kitchen well, with the
row of buckets Gird had scrubbed neatly ranged along the wall.
The sergeant was just as impressive as ever, to Gird’s eye: taller and
broader than his own father, hard-muscled, with a brisk authority that
expected absolute obedience. Gird looked at him, imagining himself
grown into that size and strength, wearing those clean, whole,
unmended clothes, having a place in the village and in his lord’s
service more secure than any farmer.

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Elizabeth Moon - Surrender None