"part4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keith Brooke - Lord of Stone)

misty rain, and the road was topped with several inches of
slippery mud. Before long his damp clothes began to chafe on
his skin.

At a junction, Rayner halted his seven men and they watched
as the rest of the Company took the fork towards Comeras.
Bligh thought of Madeleine and her little room and wished he
was going with them. He had no more stomach for this war. The
road they followed instead was a muddy track, wheel-ruts
incised deeply into its soft surface, obscured pot-holes a
frequent cause of cursing. Eventually, Rayner called them to
a halt and suggested that they take shelter in a ruined barn
that loomed darkly at the roadside.

They waited until full daylight, with water dripping all
around and the smell of damp faeces in their noses. The rain
had stopped now and they emerged to the wet-earth smell of
early Spring. Bligh looked around and saw fields with
self-seeded corn sprouting inches high from the mud, a clump
of cherry trees breaking into flower, tiny violets growing
from the walls of the barn. Some kind of magpie was
chattering from the cherry trees, sounding like a child's
imitation of a machine gun.

They marched in their ragged manner for three hours, stopping
to question suppliers and a Land Party runner of the
whereabouts of the 16th LAs. Eventually they were lucky. "The
16th?" said a tall Traian, at the head of a party of
suppliers returning from the Line. "That's us."

The 16th were covering the supplies runs for much of the
Comeran Plain. Their base was an old farmhouse, complete with
roof, window shutters, doors, floorboards. It seemed to Bligh
to be slightly corrupt to have such comfortable accommodation
so close to the Front. Their commander, Captain Ivoro, knew
nothing of his reinforcements. "The orders were hurried,"
explained Rayner. "Our Company suffered heavy losses at
Pigeon Ravine and we've been redeployed."

"Pigeon Ravine, eh? I heard about that. You'd better settle
yourselves then. You'll spread the load, I suppose." He
grinned, suddenly. "I've even got a job for you tonight: you
can take our lunatic back to Comeras and dump him on the
healers at Command."

Later, Bligh went to mix with his new Company. He soon found
that many were from the region around Dona-Jez and that he
knew some of their families. When he mentioned that Madeleine
Palmes was in Comeras, Salas Benjennery, a middle-aged man
with silvery hair and long-lashed brown eyes, said he had