"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 3 - Sword Of Bheleu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

was a note of pride in his tone.
"Siege?" Garth looked out across the empty plain stretching away in all
directions, broken only in the northeast where Skelleth stood. There was no
sign of an army, siege engines, or even other guards.
"Oh, yes. We have insufficient numbers to surround the town completely,
so we are using sentries such as myself in a ring around the walls, with
orders to summon others wherever they might be needed. The humans are so weak
that they haven't even attempted to break out yet."
Garth suppressed a derisive smile; he did not care to insult a fellow
overman, but the absurd inadequacy of such a "siege" was very obvious to him.
If the humans had not yet broken out, it was not due to weakness, but either
because they had not yet gotten around to it-probably because of poor
organization-or did not choose to do so. He wondered what fool had contrived
such a strategy even more than he wondered why his people had suddenly seen
fit to take military action. "Who devised this scheme?" he asked.
Thord smiled. "Your wife, Kyrith."
"What? Kyrith?" All mockery was forgotten in Garth's astonishment.
"Yes. She and Galt the master trader are our co-commanders, appointed by
the City Council."
Garth was momentarily dumbfounded. When he could speak coherently again,
ignoring the plaintive questions Frima was asking, he demanded, "What is going
on here? Explain this!"
Thord was taken aback at Garth's fiat and dangerous tone, but replied,
"Kyrith was concerned about your safety, Garth. She thought that the Baron of
Skelleth must have abducted you when you did not return with the others from
your trading mission. Galt told her that you had been exiled and had gone off
on your own rather than return home ignominiously, but she didn't believe it.
She petitioned the Council for permission to raise a company of volunteers to
march down here, confront this Baron, and demand your safe return. The Council
agreed; the story is that, though they believed what Galt said, they thought
such a threat might frighten the Baron of Skelleth and the other humans into
treating us better in the future. They insisted, though, that Galt share the
command, since Kyrith knew nothing of Skelleth or of human ways and might
behave rashly in her anger."
Garth interrupted. "They might have done well to include a commander who
knew something of military matters. This so-called siege cannot possibly have
cut off communication between Skelleth and the rest of Eramma, and we, can
only hope that no one in town has seen fit to summon reinforcements from the
south as yet."
It was Thord's turn to be struck dumb. "Reinforcements?" he asked at
last.
"Yes, reinforcements! Decayed as it may be, Skelleth is still an outpost
of the Kingdom of Eramma, the nation that defeated ours in the last of the
Racial Wars. They could probably have ten thousand men here within a week, to
flay us all alive." He had no real idea how large a force Eramma's High King
could muster, or how quickly it could reach Skelleth; his figures were sheer
guesswork. He had no doubt at all, however, that the Erammans would have no
trouble in obliterating a force of overmen too small to lay a proper siege.
"Oh." Thord's face remained impassive, but his discomfiture was plain in
his stiff silence. Garth heard Frima suppress a giggle. He hoped that Thord