"Vance, Jack - Alastor 2 - Trullion-2262" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Rabendary Forest-the menas looming over russet pomanders silver-green birches, dark-green pricklenuts.
He thought of the shimmer that hung above the water and softened the outline of far
shores; he thought of the ramshackle old family home, and discovered himself to be profoundly
homesick.
Two months later, at the end of ten years service, he resigned his commission and returned to
Trulllion.
Chapter 4
* * *
Glinnes had sent a letter announcing his arrival, but when he debarked at Port Maheul in Staveny
Prefecture, none of his family was on hand to greet him, which he thought strange.
He loaded his baggage onto the ferry and took a seat on the top deck, to watch the scenery go
by. How easy and gay were the country folk in their parays of dull scarlet, blue, ocher! Glinnes
semi-military garments-black jacket, beige breeches tucked into black ankleboots felt stiff and
constricted. He'd probably never wear them again!
The boat presently slid into the dock at Welgen. A delectable odor wafted past Glinnes nose,
which he traced to a nearby fried-fish booth. Glinnes went ashore and bought a packet of steamed
reed-pods and a length of barbecued eel. He looked about for Shira or Glay or Marucha, though he
hardly expected to find them here. A group of off-worlders attracted his attention: three young
men, wearing what seemed to be a uniform-neat gray one-piece garments belted at the waist, highly
polished tight black shoes-and three young women, in rather austere gowns of durable white duck.
Both men and women wore their hair cropped short, in not-unbecoming style, and wore small
medallions on their left shoulders. They passed close to Glinnes and he realized that they were
not off-worlders after all, but Trills . . . Students at a doctrinaire academy? Members of a
religious order? Either case was possible, for they carried books, calculators, and seemed to be
engaged in earnest discussion. Glumes gave the girls a second appraisal. There was, he thought,
something unappealing about them, which at first he could not define. The ordinary Trill girl
dressed herself in almost anything at hand, without over-anxiety that it might be rumpled or
threadbare or soiled, and then made herself gay with flow-prs These eirls looked not only clean,
but fastidious as well.
Too clean, too fastidious . . . Glinnes shrugged and returned to the ferry.
The ferry moved on into the heart of the fens, along waterways dank with the scent of still
water, decaying reedstalks, and occasionally a hint of a rich fetor, suggesting the presence of
merrling. Ripil Broad appeared ahead, and a cluster of shacks that was Saurkash, the end of the
line for Glinnes; here the ferry veered north for the villages along Great Vole Island. Glinnes
unloaded his cases onto the dock, and for a moment stood looking around the village. The most
prominent feature was the hussade field and its dilapidated old bleachers, once the home-field of
the Saurkash Serpents. Almost adjacent was The Magic Tench, the most pleasant of Saurkash's three
taverns. He walked down the dock to the office where ten years before Milo Harrad had rented boats
and operated a water-taxi.
Harrad was nowhere to be seen. A young man whom Glinnes did not know sat dozing in the shade.
"Good day, friend," said Glinnes, and the young man, awaking, turned toward Glinnes a look of mild
reproach. "Can you take me out to Rabendary Island?" "Whenever you like." The young man looked
Glinnes slowly up and down and lurched to his feet "You'd be Glinnes Hulden, unless I'm mistaken."
"Quite right. But I don't remember you." "You'd have no reason to do so. I'm old Harrad's nephew
from Voulash. They call me Young Harrad, and I expect that's what I'll be the rest of my life. I
mind when you played for the Serpents."
"That's some time ago. You've got an accurate memory." "Not all that good. The Huldens have always
been hussade types. Old Harrad talked much of Jut, the best rover Saurkash ever produced, or so

said old Milo. Shira was a solid guard, right enough, but slow in the jumps. I doubt I ever saw