"Cook, Glen - Black Company 10 - Soldiers Live" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Glen Cook - Black Company - Glittering Stone 04 - Soldiers Live


SOLDIERS LIVE
by Glen Cook
The Ninth Chronicle of the Black Company


Chapter 1

An Abode of Ravens: When No Men Died

Four years passedand no one died. Not of violence or hazard of the
calling, anyway. Otto and Hagop did pass on within days of each other,
of natural causes associated with aging, last year. A few weeks ago one Tam
Duc, recruit in training, perished of the overconfident exuberance
of youth. He fell into a crevasse while he and his lance brothers
were riding their blankets down the long slick slope of the Tien
Myuen glacier. There were a few others. But not a one by an
unfriendly hand.

Four years has to be a record, though not the sort often
recalled in these Annals.

That much peace is impossible to believe.

Peace that prolonged becomes increasingly seductive.

Many of us are old and tired and retain no youthful fire in the
belly. But us old farts are not in charge anymore. And though we
were prepared to forget horror, horror was not as accomodating
toward us.

In those days the Company was in service to its own name. We
recognized no master. We counted the warlords of Hsien as our
allies. They feared us. We were supernatural, many recalled from
the dead, the ultimate Stone Soldiers. They dreaded the chance that
we might take sides in their squabbles over the bones of Hsien,
that once-mighty empire the Nyueng Bao recall as the Land of
Unknown Shadows.

The more idealistic warlords have hopes of us. The mysterious
File of Nine provide arms and money and let us recruit because they
hope we can be manipulated into helping them restore the golden age
that existed before the Shadowmasters enslaved their world so
cruelly that its people still call themselves the Children of the
Dead.