"Judith Tarr - Alamut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tarr Judith)

A Saragins nel latsum mats,
Ne la verge dunt U fartid
La Kcge Mer tut ad un fais,
Quant Ie grant pople Ie seguit;

E pharaon revint afsres:

JUeli sum jurent pent.

His eyes asked no pardon of Saracen women, nor ever thought
to need it. Among the leaves a smile flashed, or two, or three.
The charger snorted. Its rider bowed again and wheeled about,
cantering up the road to the castle. The women watched him
go. One by one, slowly, they went back to their washing. In a
little while they were singing again. A new song: of morning
and of sunlight, and of a spirit of fire on a Prankish charger,
singing the conquest of their people.

The road and the song ended together. The knight hailed
the guard at Aqua Bella's gate, light and glad, offering his lone
and splendid and most assuredly Christian self to a stare both
narrow and wary. The wariness was Outremer, embattled king-
dom that it was, with the Saracen snapping at its throat; and
people always stared at him. "Tell your lord," he said, "that his
kinsman comes to greet him."

The eyes narrowed to slits. The bay charger stamped, tasting
darkness under the morning's splendor. The knight shivered in
the sun. His gladness was gone, all at once, irretrievably-

"Brychant!" Young, that voice within, but breaking with
more than youth, though it tried to be steady. "Brychant, who
comes?"

No one, the guard was going to answer. The knight watched
the thought take shape. Now was no time for guesring fools,
fresh off" the boat from the look of this one, white as a lily in
this sun-tormented country, riding alone and all begauded like
a lure to every bandit in the east.

The guard's mouth was open, the words coming quick and
harsh. But the speaker within had come up beside him. A boy,
slender, dark as a Saracen, with eyes like a wounded fawn- They
took in the stranger, once, quickly, and again more slowly,

ALAMUT 5

going impossibly wide. "Prince?" the boy whispered. "Prince
Aidan?" He gathered himself with an effort that shook his nar-
row body, and bowed, all courtesy. "Your highness, you honor