"Katya Reimann - Tielmaran 2-A Tremor in the Bitter Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reimann Katya)

“The Great Twins beg you, have mercy!” he beseeched them, and threw wide his hands in
supplication.
Corbulo paralyzed him with a second black-tipped dart. The boy dropped facedown into the fallen
chestnut flowers with an anguished cry.
Tullier, half-sick with the joy of victory, hardly heard him. He stopped at the corpse of the fair-haired
knight: an older man, with silver at his collar and sleeves. Stooping, he plunged his Sha Muir knife into the
body, below where the arrow had taken the man in the chest. Blood slicked the blade’s thunderbolt
figure—the Goddess Llara’s sign. This, after so many years of preparation, was his first kill as a Sha
Muira. Wetting his fingers with blood from the blade, Tullier marked his right shoulder with four short
lines. Great Llara—He closed his eyes, tried to imagine the face of the gray goddess turned towards
him, splendor and joy rising at her servant’s first blooding. This kill is for you; for the Emperor; for
Bissanty—He had trained more than a decade for this moment. Pictured it in its perfection, its glory—
“You almost missed your second man.”
Breaking his prayer short, Tullier’s eyes flicked to his second corpse—the groom—then across to his
journey-master. The broad-chested man, swaggering in full Sha Muir garb, moved quickly among his
own kills, imprinting his blade with the three deaths. Unlike Tullier, Corbulo did not pause to mark his
shoulders. The tall journey-master merely wiped his knife on the skirt of his robe and sheathed it.
Shoulder-marking was for novices, that gesture told Tullier. “Finished there?” he asked. “Or are you
taking the other one too?”
Tullier lifted his chin. “I’m finished.” Set to him as a question, he couldn’t—he wouldn’t—mark his
other shoulder with the blood of the second man he had killed. Not now. Not with Corbulo giving him
such a sly look, dark eyes smiling down his nose to see if his new novice would mark his every kill,
however contemptible, to the Goddess’s name.
Corbulo was right, however hard it cut him to admit it. Tullier had rushed, and in rushing he’d
fumbled his second kill; Great Llara would know. Unlike the knight, the groom had carried no weapon. It
would mean nothing to dedicate that death to her.
Tullier sheathed his blade, his first thrill draining.
Lady Vanderive’s guard had not been the challenge for which the young novice had primed himself,
and even so, he’d managed to bungle one of his kills. The boy glanced, frustrated, at the rapidly
blanching face of the knight he’d shot down. One kill for Llara. A second missed through clumsiness,
right there for his master to see. For no reason, no reason at all, outside of his own haste.
He had been cautioned that killing freemen would be harder than despatching slaves. Warned that
first-timers had to guard against haste, fear, and a kind of panicked admiration for those who struggled to
preserve their lives. Already he’d failed to heed the first of those warnings.
He glanced around the little clearing, trying to convince himself that the rest of the mistakes would be
easier to avoid. Fear and admiration? Though hurry had marred this first taste of freemen’s death, Tullier
could not see how it differed in its essentials from culling slaves in a practice yard. Corbulo’s careful
planning had reduced it to that. Spread among the fallen clusters of carnelian-and-white chestnut buds
were the pathetic remains of a picnic lunch: linen napkins; fresh white bread and early spring fruits;
children’s toys. Though the knights had been armed, the picnickers had been ready only for a day of
pleasure. Corbulo, leaving nothing to chance, had waited until they had unpacked their luncheon and laid
aside their weapons before striking. The lady’s knights had died as they’d sported with the children, not a
weapon in their hands.
Corbulo, Tullier thought, might have let one of the knights live long enough to fight. The Sha Muira
would of course have prevailed, but the young apprentice might at least have learned something, facing
such an enemy. Now all that remained was a babe in a folding canvas cradle, paralyzed children, and a
bird-thin woman, also paralyzed, who was powerless to stop them. Where did glory for Llara lie in these
killings? He could not see it. As he stood by the fresh corpse of the knight, the musky scent of crushed
chestnut flowers mixed with the tang of blood. An inexplicable bitter gall choked his throat.
“Disappointed, youngster?” Corbulo pushed by, making for the slumped woman. “Don’t be. There is