"S. M. Stirling - Shikari in Galveston" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

in the hips, as well, and showing promise of a kettle belly in later years. He was vastly bearded, since his
faith forbade cutting the hair on head or face, and the black bush of it spilled from his cheekbones down to
his barrel chest. His eyes were black, as well, moving swiftly despite the relaxed confidence of his stride,
alert for any threat.
Mostly the mud is a threat to our boots, Eric thought. Either sucking them off, or just eating them.
Someone had laid small logs in an attempt to corduroy a sidewalk, but heels had pressed them into the
blackish mud; passing horses and feet kicked up more, and a small mob of shouting children followed the
two foreigners, pointing and laughing.
A wooden scraper stood at the door of their destination, the small building with banerjii & sons on the
sign above, and they used it enthusiastically before pulling off their footwear and putting on slippers.
"Namaste, Lieutenant King sahib," the little Bengali merchant said. "I received your note. Anything I
may do for the Queen-Empress's man . . . "
"Namaste, Mr. Banerjii," King replied, sinking easily cross-legged on the cushion and gratefully taking a
cup of tea laced with cardamom, a taste of home. Sitting so felt almost strange, after so long among folk
who used chairs all the time.
He handed over a letter. The merchant raised his brows as he scanned it. "From Elias and Sons of
Delhi!" he murmured in his own language.
Bengali was close enough to King's native Hindi that he followed it easily enough for so simple a matter.
"They're my family's Delhi men-of-'business," he said modestly, keeping his wry smile in his mind.
Every trade has its hierarchy, he thought. And in some circles, it's we who gain status from being
linked to them, not vice versa.
"I will be even more happy to assist an associate of so respectable a firm," Banerjii went on, in the
Imperial dialect of English; that was King's other mother-tongue, of course. "As I understand it, you wish to
see something of the country? And to hunt?"
King nodded. And to make a report to the military intelligence department in the Red Fort in the
capital; likely nothing would come of it, but it couldn't hurt. North America was part of the
British Empire in theory, even if Delhi's writ didn't run beyond a few enclaves on the coast in actual fact.
Eventually it would have to be pacified, brought under law, opened up and developed; when that day came
any information would be useful. That might be a century from now, but the Empire was endlessly patient,
and the archives were always there.
"You will need a reliable native guide, servants, and bearers," Banerjii said.
"Are any available? The garrison commander in Galveston lent me a few men. Locally recruited there,
but reliable."
And you should have asked for more, radiated from Ranjit Singh.
Banerjii shook his head. "Oh, most definitely you must hire locally," he said. "Coastal men would be of
little use guiding and tracking here—" He gave a depreciatory smile. "—as useless as a Bengali in Kashmir.
But the natives have some reliable people. They are savages, yes, indeed, but they are a clean people here,
all the Seven Tribes and their clans. From the time of the Fall."
King nodded in turn; that was one of the fundamental distinctions in the modern world, between
those whose ancestors had eaten men in the terrible years after the hammer from the skies struck, and
those who hadn't. The only more fundamental one was between those who still did, and the rest of
humanity.
"And they are surprisingly honest, I find, particularly to their oaths—oh, my, yes. But
proud—very proud, for barbarians. There is one young man I have dealt with for some years, a hunter
by trade, and—"
With a gesture, he unrolled the tiger-skins. King caught his breath in a gasp.


lll: The Maiden in Her Wrath