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

Surrender None
Elizabeth Moon


WHY WE FIGHT
“You lost children?” Others shushed that voice, someone in a leather cloak, but
Gird answered it, counting them on his fingers.
“My first two sons died of fever; the lord refused us herb-right in the wood. My
wife lost two babes young, one from hunger and one from fever. My eldest
daughter they raped; killed her husband. The babe died unborn. My youngest son
they struck down; he lives. Another daughter they struck down, breaking her arm;
I know not if she lives or dies. And my brother’s children, that I’d taken in:
two of them dead, by the lords’ greed. And that’s children. I lost friends, my
parents, my brother.
“You ask yourselves: if they can take one child, will they stop there? Will all
your submission, all your obedience, get you peace and enough food? Has it ever
worked? You can sit here and let them take you one by one, or you can decide to
fight back.”






Acknowledgements
Too many people helped with technical advice and special knowledge to mention
all, and leaving any of them out is unfair. But special thanks to Ellen McLean,
of McLean Beefmasters, whose stock has taught me more than a college class in
Dairying ever did, to Joel Graves for showing me how to scythe without cutting
my ankles off, and to Mark Unger for instruction and demonstration of
mixed-weapon fighting possibilities. Errors are mine; they did their best to
straighten me out.



Prologue
^ »
The Rule of Aare is rule one:
Surrender none.
“Esea’s light on him,” muttered the priest, as the midwife mouthed, “Alyanya’s
sweet peace,” and laid the wet pink newborn on his mother’s belly. The priest,
sent down hurriedly in the midst of dinner from the lord’s hall, dabbed his
finger in the blood and touched it to a kerchief, then cut with silver scissors
a lock of the newborn’s wet dark hair, which he folded in the same kerchief.
With that as proof, no fond foolish peasant girl could hide the child away from
his true father. The stupid slut might try that; some of them did, being so
afraid of the lord’s magic, although anyone with wit enough to dip stew from a
kettle ought to realize that the lords meant no harm to these outbred children.
Quite the contrary. With a final sniff, the priest sketched a gesture that left
a streak of light in the room long after he’d left, and departed, to report the