"Piper, H Beam - Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen V2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

“No; Dralm bless him, Ptosphes is still our Prince. But the Lord Kalvan, Dralm bless him, too, is our new war leader. It’s said he’s a Prince himself, from a far land, which he well could be. It’s also said he’s a sorcerer, but that I doubt.”
“Yes. Sorcerers are more heard of than seen,” Vall commented. “Are there many more traders caught here as I am?”
“Oh, the Styphon’s own lot of them; the town’s full of them. You’d best go to the Sign of the Red-Halberd; the better sort of them all stay there. Give the landlord my name”—he repeated it several times to make sure it would be remembered—“and you’ll fare well.”
He chatted pleasantly with the sergeant and his troopers, about the quality of local wine and the availability of girls and the prices things fetched at sale, and then bade them good luck and rode on.
The Lord Kalvan, indeed! Deliberately, he willed himself no longer to think of the man in any other way. And a Prince from a far country, no less. He passed other farmhouses; around them some work was going on. Men were forking down dunghills and digging under them, and caldrons steamed over fires. He added that to the cheerfulness with which the cavalrymen had accepted the ban of Styphon’s House.
Styphon, it appeared, had acquired a competitor. Hostigos Town, he saw, was busier and more crowded than Sask Town had been. There were no mercenaries around, but many local troops. The streets were full of carts and wagons, and the artisans’ quarter was noisy with the work of smiths and joiners. He found the inn to which the sergeant had directed him, mentioning his name to make sure he got his rake-off, put up his horses, safe-stowed his packs and had his saddlebags, valise and carbine carried to his room. He followed the inn-servant with the bronze coffer on his shoulder. He didn’t want anybody else handling that and finding out how light it was.
When he was alone, he went to the coffer, an almost featureless rectangular block without visible lock or hinges, and pressed his thumbs on two bright steel ovals on the top. The photoelectric lock inside responded to his thumbprint patterns with a click, and the lid rose slowly. Inside were four globes of gleaming coppery mesh, a few instruments with dials and knobs, and a little sigma-ray needler, a ladies’ model, small enough to be covered by his hand but as deadly as the big one he usually carried.
There was also an antigrav unit attached to the bottom of the coffer; it was on, with a tiny red light glowing. When he switched it off, the floorboards under the coffer creaked. Lined with collapsed metal, it now weighed over half a ton. He pushed down the lid which only his thumbprints could open, and heard the lock click.
The common room downstairs was crowded and noisy. He found a vacant place at one of the long tables, across from a man with a bald head and a straggling red beard, who grinned at him.
“New fish in the net?” he asked. “Welcome, brother. Where from?”
“Ulthor, with three horse-loads of Grefftscharr wares. My name’s Verkan.”
“Mine’s Skranga.” The bald man was from Agrys City, on the island at the mouth of the Hudson. He had been trading for horses in the Trygath country.
“These people here took the lot, fifty of them. Paid me less than I asked, but more than I expected, so I guess I got a fair price. I had four Trygathi herders—they all took the colors in the cavalry. I’m working in the fireseed mill, till they let me leave here.”
“The what?” He made his voice sound incredulous. “You mean they’re making their own fireseed? But only the priests of Styphon can do that.”
Skranga laughed. “That’s what I used to think, too, but anybody can do it. It’s easy as boiling maple-sugar. See, they get saltpeter from under dunghills . . .”
He detailed the process step by step. The man next to him joined the conversation; he even understood, roughly, the theory—the charcoal was what burned, the sulfur was the kindling, and the saltpeter made the air to blow up the fire and blow the bullet out of the gun. And there was no secrecy about it, Vall mused as he listened. If a man who had been a constabulary corporal, and a combat soldier before that, wasn’t keeping any better security it was because he didn’t care. Lord Kalvan just didn’t want word getting into Nostor till he had enough fireseed to fight a war with.
“I bless Dralm for bringing me here,” Skranga was saying. “When I can leave here, I’m going somewhere and set up making fireseed myself. Hos-Ktemnos—no, I don’t want too close to Styphon’s House Upon Earth. Maybe Hos-Bletha, or Hos-Zygros. But I’ll make myself rich at it. So can you, if you keep your eyes and ears open.”
The Agrysi finished his meal, said he had to go back to work, and left. A cavalry officer, a few places down, promptly picked up his goblet and flagon and moved into the vacated seat.
“You just got in?” he asked. “From Nostor?”
“No, from Sask.” The answer seemed to disappoint the cavalryman; he went into the Ulthor-Grefftscharr routine again. “How long will I have to stay here?”
The officer shrugged. “Dralm and Galzar only know. Till we fight the Nostori and beat them. What do the Saski think we’re doing here?”
“Waiting for Gormoth to cut your throats. They don’t know you’re making your own fireseed.”
The officer laughed. “Ha! Some of those buggers’ll get theirs cut, if Prince Sarrask doesn’t mind his step. You say you have three pack-loads of Grefftscharr wares. Any sword-blades?”
“About a dozen; I sold a few in Sask Town. Some daggers, a dozen gunlocks, four good shirts of rivet-link mail, a lot of bullet-moulds. And jewelry, and tools, and brassware.”
“Well, take your stuff up to Tarr-Hostigos. They have a little fair in the outer bailey each evening; you can get better prices from the castle-folk than here in town. Go early. Use my name.” He gave it, and his cavalry unit. “See Captain Harmakros; he’ll be glad of any news you can give him.”
Late in the afternoon, he re-packed his horses and went up the road to the castle on the mountain above the gap. The workshops along the wall of the outer bailey were all busy. Among other things, he saw a new carriage for a field-piece being put together—not a four-wheel cart, but two big wheels and a trail, to be hauled with a limber, which was also being built. The gun was a welded-iron four-pounder, which was normal for Styphon’s House Subsector, but it had trunnions, which was not. Lord Kalvan, again.
Like all the local gentry, Harmakros had a small neat beard. His armor was rich but commendably well battered; his sword, instead of the customary cut-and-thrust (mostly cut) broadsword, was a long rapier, quite new. Kalvan had evidently introduced the revolutionary concept that swords had points, which should be used. He asked a few exploratory questions, then listened to a detailed account of what the Grefftscharr trader had seen in Sask, including mercenary companies Prince Sarrask had lately hired, with the names of the captains.
“You’ve kept your eyes and ears open,” he commended, “and you know what’s worth telling about. I wish you’d come through Nostor instead. Were you ever a soldier?”
“All free-traders are soldiers, in their own service.”
“Yes; that’s so. Well, when you’ve sold your loads, you’ll be welcome in ours. Not as a common trooper—I know you traders too well for that. As a scout. You want to sell your packhorses, too? We’ll give you a good price for them.”
“If I can sell my loads, yes.”
“You’ll have no trouble doing that. We’ll buy the mail, the gunlocks, the sword-blades and that sort of thing ourselves. Stay about; have your meals with the officers here. We’ll find something for you.”
He had some tools, both for wood and metalwork. He peddled them among the artisans in the shops along the outer wall, for a good price in silver and a better one in information. Besides rapiers and cannon with trunnions, Lord Kalvan had introduced rifling in firearms. Nobody knew whence he had come, except that it was far beyond the Western Ocean. The more pious were positive that he had been guided to Hostigos by the very hand of Dralm. The officers with whom he ate listened avidly to what he had picked up in Sask Town. Nostor first and then Sask seemed to be the schedule. When they talked about Lord Kalvan, the coldest expressions were of deep respect, shading from there up to hero-worship. But they knew nothing about him before the night he had appeared to rally some fleeing peasants for a counterattack on Nostori raiders and had been shot, by mistake, by Princess Rylla herself.
Vall sold the mail and sword-blades and gunlocks as a lot, and spread his other wares for sale in the bailey. There was a crowd, and the stuff sold well. He saw Lord Kalvan, strolling about from display to display, in full armor probably wearing it all the time to accustom himself to the weight, Vall decided. Kalvan was carrying a .38 Colt on his belt along with his rapier and dagger, and clinging to his arm was a beautiful blonde girl in male riding dress. That would be Prince Ptosphes’s daughter, Rylla. The happy possessiveness with which she clung to him, and the tenderness with which he looked at her, made him smile. Then the thought of his mission froze the smile on his lips. He didn’t want to kill that man, and break that girl’s heart, but—
They came over to his display, and Lord Kalvan picked up a brass mortar and pestle.
“Where did you get this?” he asked. “Where did it come from?”
“It was made in Grefftscharr, Lord; shipped down the lakes by boat to Ulthor.”
“It’s cast. Are there no brass foundries nearer than Grefftscharr?”
“Oh, yes, Lord. In Zygros City there are many.”
Lord Kalvan put down the mortar. “I see. Thank you. Captain Harmakros tells me he’s been talking to you. I’d like to talk to you, myself. I think I’ll be around the castle all morning, tomorrow; ask for me, if you’re here.”
Returning to the Red Halberd, Vall spent some time and a little money in the common room. Everybody, as far as he could learn, seemed satisfied that the mysterious Lord Kalvan had come to Hostigos in a perfectly normal manner, with or without divine guidance. Finally, he went up to his room.
Opening the coffer, he got out one of the copper-mesh globes, and from it drew a mouthpiece on a small wire, into which he spoke for a long time.
“So far,” he concluded “there seems to be no suspicion of anything paranormal about the man in anybody’s mind. I have been offered an opportunity to take service with his army as a scout. I intend doing this; assistance can be given me in performing this work. I will find a location for an antigrav conveyer to land, somewhere in the woods near Hostigos Town; when I do, I will send a message-ball through from there.”
Then he replaced the mouthpiece, set the timer for the transposition-field generator, and switched on the antigrav. Carrying the ball to an open window, he tossed it outside, and then looked up as it vanished in the night. After a few seconds, high above, there was an instant’s flash among the many visible stars. It looked like a meteor; a Hostigi, seeing it, would have made a wish.
———«»——————«»——————«»———
KALVAN sat on a rock under a tree, wishing he could smoke, and knowing that he was getting scared again. He cursed mentally. It didn’t mean anything—as soon as things started happening he’d forget about it—but it always happened, and he hated it. That sort of thing was all right for a buck private, or a platoon-sergeant, or a cop going to arrest some hillbilly killer, but, for Dralm’s sake, a five-star general, now!
And that made him think of what Churchill had called Hitler—the lance corporal who had promoted himself to commander-in-chief at one jump. Corporal Morrison had done that, cut Hitler’s time by quite a few years, and gotten into the peerage, which Hitler hadn’t.
It was quiet on the mountaintop, even though there were two hundred men squatting or lying around him, and another five hundred, under Chartiphon and Prince Ptosphes, five hundred yards behind. And, in front, at the edge of the woods, a skirmish line of thirty riflemen, commanded by Verkan, the Grefftscharr trader.
There had been some objections to giving so important a command to an outlander; he had informed the objectors rather stiffly that until recently he had been an outlander and a stranger himself. Verkan was the best man for it. Since joining Harmakros’s scouts, he had managed to get closer to Tarr-Dombra than anybody else, and knew the ground ahead better than any. He wished he could talk the Grefftscharrer into staying in Hostigos. He’d fought bandits all over, as any trader must, and Trygathi, and nomads on the western plains, and he was a natural rifle-shot and a born guerrilla. Officer type, too. But free-traders didn’t stay anywhere; they all had advanced cases of foot-itch and horizon-fever.
And out in front of Verkan and his twenty rifled calivers at the edge of the woods, the first on any battlefield in here-and-now history, were a dozen men with rifled 8-bore muskets, fitted with peep-sights and carefully zeroed in, in what was supposed to be cleared ground in front of the castle gate. The condition of that approach ground was the most promising thing about the whole operation.