"Bujold, Lois McMaster - Chalion 3 - The Hallowed Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bujold Lois McMaster)

A step sounded on the floorboards; Ingrey looked up to see Ulkra approaching, seeming to loom and crouch simultaneously. УYour pleasure, my lord?Ф he inquired nervously.
To be anywhere but here, doing anything but this.
HeТd been over two days in the saddle. He was, he decided abruptly, too mortally tired to ride another mile today. Boleso could be in no hurry to gallop to his funeral, and divine judgment. And Ingrey had no burning desire to rush this accursed naяve girl to her earthly judgment, either. She was not afraid of the right things. Five gods help him, she seemed not afraid of anything.
УWill you,Ф he said to her, Уgive me your word, if I order your guard lightened, that you will not attempt to escape?Ф
УOf course,Ф she said. As if surprised he even felt a need to ask.
He gestured to the housemaster. УPut her in a proper room. Give her her things back. Find a decent maid, if any is to be found in this place, to attend her and help her pack. WeТll leave for Easthome with BolesoТs body at first light tomorrow.Ф
УYes, my lord,Ф said Ulkra, ducking his head in relieved assent.
Ingrey added as an afterthought, УHave any men of the household fled, since BolesoТs death?Ф
УNo, my lord. Why do you ask?Ф
Ingrey gave a vague gesture, indicating no reason that he cared to share. Ulkra did not pursue the question.
Ingrey creaked to his feet. He felt as if his muscles squeaked louder protest than his damp leathers. Lady Ijada gave him a grateful curtsey, and turned to follow the housemaster. She looked back over her shoulder at him as she turned onto the staircase, a grave, trusting glance.
His duty was to deliver her to Easthome. Nothing more. Into the hands ofЕno one friendly to her cause. His fingers clenched and unclenched on his hilt.
Nothing more.
CHAPTER TWO
T HE CORTEGE, SUCH AS IT WAS, LUMBERED OUT THE CASTLE gate in the dawn fog. Ingrey set six of BolesoТs guards riding before and six behind what might charitably be described as a farm wagon. The wagon was burdened with a hastily cobbled-together oblong box, heavy with BolesoТs body and the coarse salt, meant to preserve game, which made his last bed. In some sad effort at proper ceremony, Rider Ulkra had found a stag hide to cover the coffin, and funereal cloths to wrap the posts at the corners of the wagon bed, in lieu of draperies unlikely to survive the local roads. Whatever attempts the guardsmen had made to furbish up their gear for this somber duty were lost from view in the clinging mists. IngreyТs eye was more concerned for the security of the ropes that bound the box in place.
The teamster that Ulkra had drafted was a local yeoman, owner of both wagon and team, and he kept his sturdy horses well in hand during the first precarious turns and bumps of the narrow road. By his side, his wife hung on grimly but expertly to the wooden brake, which shrieked against the wheel as the wagon descended. She was a staid older woman, a better female chaperone for his prisoner, Ingrey thought, than the slatternly and frightened young servant girl Ulkra had first offered, and she would be guarded in turn by her husband. Ingrey trusted his own men, but remembered that inner bar on the prisonerТs chamber door; whatever Lady Ijada had supposed, Ingrey was quite sure that obstacle hadnТt been an oversight on UlkraТs part.
The whitewashed walls and conical green slate tower caps of the castle disappeared dreamlike among the smoke-gray trees, and the road widened and straightened for a short stretch. Ingrey gave a quiet salute to the two of his own escort bringing up the rear, which was as silently returned, and urged his horse forward around the wagon and its outriders. In the lead, the other two pairs of IngreyТs guards bracketed Lady Ijada.
The prisoner rode her own horse. Ingrey did not know whether Earl HorseriverТs stables or Lady IjadaТs own family had furnished her mount, but it was a fine showy chestnut, well fleshed and supple in action. It sidled and snorted in its freshness, its ears flicking nervously. If she should clap her heels to the beastТs sides and attempt some cross-country escape, it would not be easy to ride her down. She showed no signs of doing so just yet, however; she sat the mare lightly, with an occasional touch on the reins to keep it from outpacing the other horses. This morning Lady Ijada wore a riding habit suitable to a noblewomanТs hunting party, with a jacket dyed burnt-brown traced with copper thread, a polished gleam of boots peeping from the hems of her split skirts. Her dark hair was tied back severely and bundled in a crocheted net at her nape. Her creamy neckcloth just hid BolesoТs purplish finger marks.
Ingrey had no intention of making idle conversation with his charge, so merely favored her with a polite nod and pushed on to the head of the column. He rode in silence for a time. The dripping of water from high branches in the steep woods and the gurgling of freshets, running melodiously beneath the road through hollowedlog culverts, sounded loud in his ears despite the creaking of gear, groaning of the wagon wheels, and plodding of hooves behind him. They rounded a last dropping curve, the road leveled, and they emerged from beneath the leafy canopy into an unexpected well of light.
The sun had broken through a gap in the ridges to the east, turning the moist air to floating gold and the far slopes to a fiery green. Only one trickle of smoke, probably from a party of charcoal burners, marked any human occupation in the dense carpet of woods rising beyond the hamlet and its fields. The sight did not lift IngreyТs spirits. He frowned down at the mud of the road instead, then reined his horse aside to check that the tail of the cortege cleared the trees without incident. He turned back to find himself riding beside Lady Ijada.
She was staring around with muted pleasure in her eyes, which appeared bright hazel-gold in this new light. УHow the hills glow! I love these forests between the bitter heights and the tilled lands.Ф
УItТs difficult and dangerous country,Ф said Ingrey, Уbut the roads will improve once we descend from the wastes.Ф
She tilted her head at his sour expression. УThis place does not please you? My dower lands are a like waste, then, west of here in the marches where the mountains dwindle.Ф She hesitated. УMy stepfather is of your mind about such silent tractsЧbut then he is a town-man bred, a master of works for the Temple in Badger-bridge, and likes trees best in the form of rafters and gates and trestles. He says it were better I made my face my dower than those haunted woods.Ф She grimaced abruptly, the light fading in her eyes. УHe was so pleased for me when one of my Badgerbank aunts found me the place in the HorseriversТ high household. And now this.Ф
УDid he imagine you would snare a husband, under the princessТs eye?Ф
УSomething like that. It was to be my great chance.Ф She shrugged. УIТve since learned that high lords get to be such by being more concerned, not less, with dowers than other men. I should have anticipatedЕФ Her mouth firmed. УI might have anticipated some seducer, arrogant in his rank. It was the heretical sorcery and howling madness that took me by surprise.Ф
For the first time, Ingrey wondered if the husband whose eye Ijada had snared might have been Earl Horseriver. Four years he had been married to the hallow kingТs daughter, and no children yet; was there anything more to the delay than ill luck? Reason indeed for the princess to barter her handmaiden out of her household at the first opportunityЧand if jealous enough of her lovely rival, to a fate Fara must have known would not be pleasantЕ? Had the princess known of her brotherТs perilous plans? Aside from the rape, you mean?
Which beginning? Lady Ijada had asked, yesterday. As though there were a dozen to choose among.
УWhat did you think of Earl Horseriver?Ф Ingrey inquired, in a neutral voice. The earl was landed, of an ancient kin, but his most arresting power at present was doubtless his ordainerТs vote, one of the thirteen needed to confirm a new hallow king. Yet such political concerns seemed quite over this young womanТs head, however level it might be.
Now the lips pursed in a thoughtful frown. But not in dismay, Ingrey noted, nor in any flush of embarrassment. УIТm not sure. HeТs a strangeЕman. I almost said young man, but really, he scarcely seems young. I suppose itТs partly the untimely gray in his hair. HeТs very sharp of wit, uncomfortably so at times. And moody. Sometimes he goes about for days in silence, as if lost in his own thoughts, and no one dares speak to him, not even the princess. At first I thought it was because of his little, you know, deformities, the spine and the oddly shaped face, but truly, he seems not to care about his body at all. It certainly doesnТt impede him.Ф She glanced at Ingrey with belated wariness. УDo you know him well?Ф
УNot since we are grown,Ф said Ingrey. УI have a near tie to him by blood through his late mother. I met him a few times when we were both children.Ф Ingrey remembered the young Lord Wencel kin Horseriver as an undersized, clumsy boy, seeming slow of wit, with a rather wet mouth. Perhaps shyness had rendered Wencel tongue-tied; but the boy-Ingrey had lacked sympathy for a smaller cousin who did not keep up, and had made no effort to include him. Fortunately, in retrospect, Ingrey had made no effort to torment him, either. УHis father and mine died within a few months of each other.Ф
Though the aged Earl Horseriver had died quietly and decently, of an ordinary stroke. Not in his prime, baying and foaming, his feverish screams echoing through the castle corridors as though rising from some pit of agony beneath the earthЕIngrey bit back the memory, hard.
Her eyes flicked toward him. УWhat was your father like?Ф
УHe was castlemaster of Birchgrove, under the lordship of old Earl Kasgut kin Wolfcliff.Ф And I am not. Would her rather too-quick wits notice, or would she merely assume him a younger son? УBirchgrove commands the valley of the Birchbeck, where it runs into the Lure.Ф Which did not, precisely, answer the question sheТd asked. How had they drifted onto this dire subject? Her tone, he realized, had been as tensely neutral as his leading question about Horseriver.
УSo Rider Ulkra told me.Ф She drew a long breath, staring ahead between her horseТs ears. УHe also said, it was rumored that your father died from the bite of a rabid wolf, that heТd tried to steal the spirit from, and that he gave you a wolf spirit, too, but it turned out to be crippled, and only made you very sick. And your life and wits were despaired of, which is why your uncle succeeded to Birchgrove and not you, but later your family sent you on pilgrimage, and you grew better. I wondered if all this was true, and why your father committed so reckless an act.Ф Only when she had spat out all this hurried chain of tattle did she turn her face to his, her eyes anxious and searching.
IngreyТs horse snorted and tossed its head at his jerk on the reins. Ingrey loosened his fist, and, a moment later, unclenched his teeth. He finally managed to growl, УUlkra gossips. It is a fault.Ф
УHe is afraid of you.Ф
УNot enough, it seems.Ф He yanked his horse away and pretended to inspect the cortege, returning up the other side to the head of the column. Alone. She looked after him as he passed, her mouth opening as if to speak, but he ignored her.
Forcing the cortege up the muddy road out of the valley diverted his mind enough to regain his calm, or at least replace his fuming with other irritations. On a steep incline, with the blowing teamТs hooves slipping, the wagon began to slide sideways toward a precipitous edge; the teamsterТs wife screeched alarm. Ingrey flung himself off his horse and led the quicker-witted among the guards to brace themselves and strain against the wagonТs side and rear, pushing it away from the dizzying drop and up through the mire.
It cost him a strained shoulder and a good deal of filth on his riding leathers, and he was almost tempted to let the load go into the ravine. He imagined it falling, breaking up, the coffin bouncing on the boulders and splitting open and BolesoТs nude corpse plunging to its just doom in a shower of salt. But the wagon must needs pull the struggling loyal horses after it, and they did not deserve the princeТs fate. And, given that he stood between the wagon and the drop, Ingrey himself would have been swept over, crushed underneath the first impact. TheyТd have had to use his good riding leathers as a bag for his remains, after that. The gruesome thought amused him enough that he remounted his horse afterward in a restored, if winded, humor.
They paused at noon at a wide clearing just off the road, home to an ancient spring. His men unpacked the bread and cold meats provided by the castle cook, but Ingrey, calculating distances and hours of light, was more concerned for the horses. The team was mud-crusted and sweaty, so he set BolesoТs surly retinue to assisting the teamster in unharnessing and rubbing them down before they were fed. The worst of the gradients were behind them now; with a suitable rest, he judged the beasts would last till nightfall, by which time he hoped to reach the Temple town of Reedmere, commandeer some more fitting conveyance, and send the rustic rig home.
More princely conveyance, Ingrey revised his thought. A former manure wagon seemed to him all too fitting. Closer to Easthome, he decided, he would send a rider ahead to guide a relief cortege to him, and hand off BolesoТs body to more gaudy and noble ceremony, provided by those who cared for the prince. Or at least, cared for BolesoТs rank and the show they made to each other. Maybe heТd send the rider tonight.
He washed his hands in the springТs outlet and accepted a slab of venison wrapped in bread from his lieutenant, Gesca. Gnawing, he looked around for his prisoner and her attendant. The teamsterТs wife was busy about the food baskets by the unhitched wagon. Lady Ijada was walking about the clearingЧin that costume, she might whisk into the woods and disappear among the tall tree boles in a moment. Instead, she pried up a stone from the crumbled foundation above the spring and picked her way over to where Ingrey rested on a big fallen log.
УLook,Ф she said, holding out the glittery gray block.
Ingrey looked. On one side of the stone a spiral pattern was incised into the weathered surface.
УItТs the same as one of the symbols Boleso had drawn on his body. In red madder, centered on his navel. Did you see it there?Ф
УNo,Ф Ingrey admitted. УHis body had been washed off already.Ф
УOh,Ф she said, looking a little taken aback. УWell, it was.Ф
УI do not doubt you.Ф Though others will be free to. Had she realized this yet?
She stared around the clearing. УDo you think this place was a forest shrine, once?Ф
УVery possibly.Ф He followed her glance, studying the stumps and the sizes of the trees. Whatever holy or unholy purposes the original possessors had held, the latest ax work had been done by humble itinerant woodcutters, by the evidence. УThe spring suggests it. This place has been cleared, abandoned, and recleared more than once, if so.Ф Following, perhaps, the ebb and flow of the Darthacan Quintarian war against the forest heresies that had so disrupted the kin lands, four centuries ago when Audar the Great had first conquered the Weald.