"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 4 - Book of Silence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

After a moment of stunned silence, Garth demanded, "So it was all a
fraud?"
The faces of the men were blackened with some sort of gritty dust, but
Garth thought he recognized one of them as a person he had seen in the village
where he had eaten that morning. It was this man who answered. "No, no...I
mean, not originally. There was a real dragon once, really there was."
"But he died," another man said.
"We fed him poisoned sheep," a third added. "It was really very simple.
My grandfather told me all about it."
"And you built a new one, so that no one would know it was dead. Why?"
The men looked at one another; it was plain to Garth that they were
terrified of him, overawed by this huge inhuman warrior they faced, and none
wanted to be the first to give an answer he might not like.
"Why?" Garth demanded again, brandishing his axe.
There was a sudden babble of response as they all decided simultaneously
that not answering might be even more dangerous than speaking unpleasant
truths. "To frighten off outsiders and keep away invaders," one replied.
Garth lowered his weapons; everything was suddenly clear. Orgul was a
peaceful valley; any warriors it might once have had to defend it must have
died fighting the dragon. Yet it was surrounded by avaricious warlords who
would gladly turn it into a battlefield-the Baron of Sland, for example, would
undoubtedly be delighted to have an undefended target for conquest that was
not a part of the Kingdom of Eramma and thus not covered by the terms of his
predecessor's surrender. While the dreaded dragon had lived, though, no one
had dared to attack; the tales had kept potential invaders away, assuring them
that the monster could destroy an army.
The Orgulians had not meant to harm anyone, but merely to protect their
homes. They had not slain Garth with their toy even when they had a chance.
They could have burned him to death three times over, yet had not. He could
not hold against them their desire to defend themselves and to frighten away a
menace to their security.
It was impressive indeed, this device of theirs, and obviously a needed
precaution; stories alone would not have staved off adventurers forever, but
the sight of a dragon flying overhead, perhaps snorting fire and smoke, would
deter all but a dedicated lunatic such as Garth.
He looked at the great machine and asked, "How does it work?"
The change in the human faces was dramatic as the tension suddenly
dissipated. "Oh, it's most complex!" a young man, perhaps only a boy,
exclaimed. "Come and see! There is a furnace for the smoke and flame, and one
man works that, and there's one to each wing, while another serves to guide
them. I control the tail, and Deg, here, controls the claws, and then there's
a man in the neck. It's all most intricate, and all clockwork, all mechanical,
machinery like no other. It takes all ten of us all day to wind it."
Garth nodded in response to the youth's enthusiasm, and a tentative
smile appeared here and there among the humans. "Who made it?" he asked,
though he thought he knew the answer.
"Why, old Petter, the toymaker, did most of it, designing and building
most of the machinery. The smith built the framework, and the tinker and three
apprentices made the scales. Gerrith the jeweler made the eyes, and the whole
village worked on it where we could. Every town in Orgul helps in mining coal