"Cook, Glen - Black Company 07 - The Bleak Season" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Ghosts donТt see a lot of strangers, at least of a friendly persuasion. YouТre
right. They do look hungry. That happens during these siege things.
Try not to look too much like a lamb roast.
Think thatТs a joke? Stay away from the Nar.
Welcome to Dejagore, what the Taglians call this deathtrap. The teeny brown
Shadowlanders the Black Company grabbed it from call it Stormgard. People who
actually live here always called it Jaicur even when that was a crime. And who
knows what the Nyueng Bao call it. And who cares, eh? They arenТt talking and
they arenТt part of the equation anyway.
ThatТs one of them. That rascal there, no meat on him and a skull face.
Everybody around here is some shade of brown but theirs is different. It has a
grey cast to it. Almost deathly. You wonТt mistake a Nyueng Bao for anything
else.
Their eyes are like polished coal no fire will ever warm.
That noise?
Sounds like Mogaba, the Nar and the First Legion rooting out Shadowlanders
again. Some get inside almost every night. They are like field mice. You just
canТt get rid of them all.
Found some the other day that had been in hiding since the Company took the
city.
How about that smell out there? It was worse before the Shadowlanders started
burying the bodies. Maybe a shovel was a little too complicated a machine.
Those long mounds that radiate from the city like spokes have corpses stacked
like cordwood inside. Sometimes they didnТt pile the dirt on deep enough and the
gasses of corruption burst the mounds open. ThatТs when you hope the wind is
blowing their way.
You see how positively they are thinking, all the not-yet-filled-trenches they
are digging. A lot of the dirt goes into the ramps.
The elephants are the worst. They take forever to rot. They tried burning them
once, but all that did was irritate the buzzards. So where they could they just
dragged the bodies over and incorporated them into their ramps.
Who? The ugly little guy with the uglier hat? That is One-Eye. You must have
been warned about him.
How come One-Eye? On account of the eye patch. Clever, huh?
The other runt is Goblin. You should have been warned about him, too. No? Well,
stay out of their way. All the time is best, but especially if they are arguing,
and most particularly if they have been drinking. As wizards go they are no
earthshakers but they are more than you will be able to handle.
Puny as they are, they are the main reason the Shadowlanders have stayed out
there in the country roughing it, leaving the wallowable luxuries of the city to
the Taglian troops and Black Company.
No, now pay attention. Goblin is the white one. All right, youТre right, he is
overdue for his annual bath. Goblin is the one who looks like a toad. One-Eye is
the one with the hat and the patch.
The guys in the once-upon-a-time-they-were-white tunics are Taglian soldiers.
Every day now every one of them asks himself what damned fool notion made him
enroll in the legions.
The folks wearing the colored sheets and unhappy expressions are locals.
Jaicuri.
Fancy this. When the Company and the legions swooped down from the north and