"Joel Rosenberg - Paladins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

PALADINS
Joel Rosenberg
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2004by Joel Rosenberg

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any
form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-8851-2

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

First printing, September 2004

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
Baen Books by Joel Rosenberg
Guardians of the Flame
Guardians of the Flame: Legacy
Paladins
DEDICATION

This one's for Lydy. Which is only fair.
Boys throw stones at frogs in sport, but the frogs do not die in sport.
They die in earnest.
—Plutarch

Chapter 1:Into the Fire
I'll begin at the beginning, because with Cully, the beginning is always the same: a
man standing between the sharp and the soft.
 "Not while I breathe," he's saying.

I've always thought that's a better oath than "service, honor, faith, and obedience," and
not just because I've been the soft more often than the sharp.