"Adams, Robert - Horseclans 07 - Horseclans's Odyssey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)

In addition to the cookhouse, there were a score of other structures, all necessary for the proper hosting of guests, their animals and running stockЧhuge, commodious stables for horses and mules; a sizable corral for oxen, partially roofed over to protect the beasts from the weather; a big smokehouse for cured meats and a springhouse of equal size for keeping butter, fresh cheeses, milk and suchlike. The smithy adjoined the shop of a wagonwright, with the fabulous six-holer privy being situated hard by the spacious pigpens. For easier egg collection, the hens were kept confined to the environs of their roosting house by a tall fence of woven reeds. Nonetheless, the roosters and some of the more adventurous hens were always roaming the innyard to be chased and occasionally caught by the hounds whose presence was thought to discourage the inroads of fox, skunk, weasel and other vermin.

Another covered pen usually held a few fatting sheep, for mutton was a favored fare among the inn's clientele, while a small herd of milk goats were rapidly converting a growth of young trees a few hundred yards behind the inn into a stubbly field. Portuh Frank and his current woman dwelt in a small, snug cottage near the inn, and the remainder of the staff bunked in one of the three structures designed for the purpose.

The commodious cellars beneath the main structure held the bulk of the serai's provenderЧbarrels of flour and meal, dried beans, peas and lentils, cured and aged cheeses, casks of lard and honey and oil, dried fruits and vegetablesЧ apples, peaches, pears, plums, raisins, garlic, onions, pumpkin, herbs, mushroomsЧkegs of beer, pipes of various wines, barrels of hwiskees and stone jugs of cordials and brandies. In the darker, cooler reaches, wooden bins held root vegetables and fresh cabbages with casks and barrels of pickled foodstuffs stacked between. The cellars also gave lodging to a trio of brown ferretsЧa hob and two fitchesЧthe very presence of which guaranteed an utter dearth of resident rats and mice. The only entrance to these magazines lay without the main building, and the only two keys to its massive iron lock were never out of the sight of Portuh and his master cook, one Dik Tchertch.

Being by their very nature parsimonious, few traders of any class would pay the slightly exorbitant prices Portuh demanded for lodgings within the private, lockable rooms on the second floor, usually either sleeping with their menЧrolled in skins and blankets and quiltsЧon or under the tables and benches which furnished the first floorЧor in the familiar discomfort of their huge wagons. Therefore, few of the upper-floor rooms were any longer furnished, those that were being but crudely so, since their most frequent use was to lock up for the night either slaves or especially valuable merchandise.

So, when the slightly drunk and overbearing Urbahnos and his party of bravos descended upon the serai in the deepening dusk of the wet, gloomy day, demanding a suite of well-heated rooms, a hot bath, food, wines, brandy and cordials, Portuh found both himself and his staff hard pressed to accommodate this unusual and scathing-tongued guest in less than the best part of an hour. Never before had he, either in this place or in his former localeЧfar to the northeast, whence he had fled by night only a skip and a jump ahead of the grim and hard-eyed retainers of a certain earlЧhad had as a guest one of these eastern Ehleenee, and if all were as impossible to please as this one, he thought that he could just as easily live out the remainder of his life without the custom of another of the insultingly supercilious bastards.

But Portuh was nothing if not capable and unstintingly patient wherever money was involved, and in time the suite of rooms was cleaned, furnished and brightly lit to the Ehleen's grudging approval. The drafts of cold, wet air which would certainly have entered through the small, high window holes had been forestalled by stuffing the openings with rags and covering these plugs with small, bright hangings. Then the fine charcoal in the braziers' was started with red embers brought from the blazing hearths below.

Portuh himself sprinkled the aromatic herbs and gums atop the started charcoal and supervised the setting up of a long copper bathing trough and its filling with many steaming bucketsful of fresh-boiled spring water. The arrangements of what would be the Ehleen's sleeping and bathing chamber once completed, Portuh set himself and his staff to the larger, outer chamber.

With the final meal of the day still cooking, the only hot foods available were mutton broth and hwiskee punch, but Portuh had a large pot of each placed in the center of the table, with a heaping platter of cold smoked ham, several full loaves of crusty bread, crocks of relishes, pickles and fruits preserved in honey, a cold joint of veal, a brace of cold boiled hens and decanters of various wines, cider and brandy. Then, with bows" far lower than his girth would seem to permit, he ushered the ill-tempered Urbahnos up the stairs to inspect.

The first few days after the flamboyant escape of their older sister, Bahb and Djoh had been kicked and cuffed by their angered, frustrated captors. But the boys had borne this abuse as stoically as the long captivity, snarling curses at the men who struck them, saving any tears for times when they were alone and unobserved. And this behavior had won them the grudging respect of most members of the trader caravan.

Although the traders assumed them brothers and although they addressed each other frequently by that term, the two boys were not that closely related. Bahb Steevuhnz was a full brother of StehfahnahЧboth having had the same mother and fatherЧbut little Djoh's mother had been a concubine, not of Horseclans stock but rather taken in a raid somewhere up on the far northern plains. However, this alien woman had died in his bearing and he had simply been added to the other baby then being nursed by another of his sire's womenЧthis one a third wife of Horseclans bloodЧand at his current age of ten winters he considered himself to be a Horseclansman, for all that he almost totally lacked mind-speak and had darker skin tone and bigger bones than most Horseclans folk, with brown eyes and hair that was coarse and, when not bleached by sun, a light ruddy brown.

On the other hand, Bahb looked his heritage, was a true scion of the Sacred Ancestors in all ways. His telepathic abilities were great and well honed; he could mindspeak horse and prairiecat and the more intelligent of wild beasts as well as he could carry on everyday silent communication with others of his clan and tribe. And from his crosslegged Seat on the thin pallet in a corner of the chilly room in which he and Djoh were immured, he was using this talent to "chat" with the horses on which he and Djoh and Stehfahnah and their now dead older sibling had ridden into the trader camp. Although too small for the majority of the big traders to ride, the wiry horses had proved fine for load-packing and so had been retained. But, according to the plans of the traders, they too would go on the block at Pahdookahport.

But Bahb Steevuhnz had other plans, and it was the implementation of these that he was discussing with the most intelligent of the four mares, Windswift.

"Sister, Djoh and I have been working at the two bars of iron that block the wall opening in the place where we are. The opening is far too small for a man's shoulders to go through anyway, so whoever set the bars did not set them deep and now only a hard tug is needed to clear them away. Little Djoh can slip through easily, and I can make it, too, and one of the trader wagons is against the wall but a spear length below. But do you understand what you must do? Everything depends on you, horse sister."

The middle-aged mare beamed assent, adding, "But such a ruse could work only with stupid twolegs such as these who have enslaved usЧtwolegs lacking mindspeak. who have no real understanding of my kind. My brother will bespeak me when to begin?"

"Yes, horse sister, and it will be well after Sacred Sun has gone to His rest. No moon or stars this night, and just as well, tooЧthe darker the better, for our purposes."

"But, brother twolegs, if this plan fails," added the mare grimly, "my sisters and I, we will not be taken alive by these ignorant, brutal twolegs. At your behest and at your twolegs sister's we have been meek and spiritless as so many silly sheep. But no moreЧafter this night we fight!"

Bahb agreed just as grimly. "Belike, this night, we all will fight, sister; we shall regain our freedom or go to Wind."

After the serving of the evening mealЧplain food, but plentifulЧthere was a brief period when the traders and their employees simply lolled on the benches and stools about the fires, chatting desultorily, picking at teeth, belching and otherwise going about the early stages of digestion. A bit apart from hoi polloi, HwahruhnЧwho had been chosen as his successor by the wounded and crippled Shifty Stuart, whom they had had to leave in the home of a physician back in TworivertownЧand Custuh held their own, low-voiced discourse.

"It's boun' t' be them boys," averred Custuh firmly. I done had lotsa truck with them damn Ehleenee. City borned an' bred, all of the shaved an' oiled an' sweet-smellin' bastids, an" it takes suthin' more'n jest extry fine furs 'r the like fer to mek 'em leave ther dang houses an' towns, even in good weather. So, fer thet there fancy-dan Ehleen asshole up there to shuffle his stumps long a muddy road this far from Pahdookahport, he's jes natcherly got him a dang good reason, Hwahruhn, ol" buddy; an' it ain't but one lot we got would set a dang Ehleen to itching. Everbody knows "bout how they dotes on pretty lil boys."

Setting mug to lips, Custuh drained off the last mouthful of beer from it, then nodded and stated, "You jest watch what I says, buddy boyЧafore long, thet there Ehleen'll be down here or, likelies', he'll've sent one of his bodyguards down to fetch us up there to his rooms. An' you bet it'll be them boys he's after, an' we play him right, we'll mek us as much off'n them as ever'thin' elst put t'gether."

Trader Hwahruhn said nothing at once, sipping at a beaker of fine wine and sinking his gaze into the darksome depths of the vintage. He still felt strongly, had indeed felt so from the very beginning out on the prairie, that only calamity would be the result of the cruelty and treachery with which Shifty Stuart had enslaved the three nomad children and slain their elder brother. He had seen the maiming and crippling of the senior trader as but the beginning of this doom.

He had been pondering upon the subject much of late. The poor abused girl was dead, as likely as not, and the boys could definitely not be released to return to their clan. If such were done, no trader would be safe out there until that clan's thirst for blood was slaked. But neither was it really needful to sell the lads into slaveryЧespecially not for the hideous, unnatural bondage for which Ehleenee were infamous.

Hwahruhn had begun to wonder if the fearsome doom he could feel pressing upon them could be averted if he took the boys home with him and reared them as sons. He had meant to look in on the boys this night to explain realities, broach his plan and give them the ways and means to appear so weak and sickly that the auctioneer in Pahdookahport would most likely not even accept them in his holding pen, much less put them on the block. But now, with that damned, odious, effeminate easterner in the very serai, both time and opportunity had flown. And he felt ill, queasy in the face of a dire and certain dangerЧapparently sensed by none other, but nonetheless now hovering so near that he could feel prickling hairs or gooseflesh over every inch of his body.

Custuh had arisen and stepped over to a beer barrel to refill his flagon, and so rapt was Hwahruhn that be nearly jumped out of his skin and did slop out half his wine when a throat was loudly cleared just behind him. He turned to behold the dark-skinned chief bodyguard of the Ehleen.

Although he had shed both his armor and sword, Nahseer lookedЧand was, in truthЧno less dangerous with the long, wide-bladed dirk depending from his belt. But his manner and his tone were formally polite and deferential.