"Cook, Glen - Dreams of Steel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

"You know me?"

"Oh, yes, Mistress. The Captain's Lady." He emphasized those last two words, separately and heavily. He bowed three times. Each time his right thumb and forefinger brushed a triangle of black cloth that peeped over the top of his loincloth. "We stood guard while you slept. We should have realized you would need no protection. Forgive us our presumption."

Gods, did he smell. "Have you seen anyone else?"

"Yes, Mistress. A few, from afar. Running, most of them."

"And the Shadowmasters' soldiers?"

"They search, but with no enthusiasm. Their masters didn't send many. A thousand like these pigs." He indicated the man I had dropped. His partner was searching the body. "And a few hundred horsemen. They must be busy with the city."

"Mogaba will give them hell if he can, buying time for others to get clear."

The big man said, "Nothing on this toad either, jamadar."

The little man grunted.

Jamadar? It's the Taglian word for captain. The little man had used it earlier, with a different intonation, when he'd called me the Captain's Lady.

I asked, "Have you seen the Captain?"

The pair exchanged looks. The little man stared at the ground. "The Captain is dead, Mistress. He died trying to rally the men to the standard. Ram saw it. An arrow through the heart."

I sat down on the ground. There was nothing to say. I'd known it. I'd seen it happen, too. But I hadn't wanted to believe it. Till that instant, I realized, I'd been carrying some small hope that I'd been wrong.

Impossible that I could feel such loss and pain. Damn him, Croaker was just a man! How did I get so involved? I never meant it to get complicated.

This wasn't accomplishing anything. I got up. "We lost a battle but the war goes on. The Shadowmasters will rue the day they decided to bully Taglios. What are your names?"

The little man said, "I'm Narayan, Lady." He grinned. I'd get thoroughly sick of that grin. "A joke on me. It's a Shadar name." He was Gunni, obviously. "Do I look it?" He jerked his head at the other man, who was Shadar. Shadar men tend to be tall and massive and hairy. This one had a head like a ball of kinky wire with eyes peering out. "I was a vegetable peddler till the Shadowmasters came to Gondowar and enslaved everyone who survived the fight for the town."

That would have been before we'd come to Taglios, last year, when Swan and Mather had been doing their inept best to stem the first invasion.

"My friend is Ram. Ram was a carter in Taglios before he joined the legions."

"Why did he call you jamadar?"

Narayan glanced at Ram, flashed a grin filled with bad teeth, leaned close to me, whispered, "Ram isn't very bright. Strong as an ox he is, and tireless, but slow."

I nodded but wasn't satisfied. They were two odd birds. Shadar and Gunni didn't run together. Shadar consider themselves superior to everyone. Hanging around with a Gunni would constitute a defilement of spirit. And Narayan was low-caste Gunni. Yet Ram showed him deference.

Neither harbored any obviously wicked designs toward me. At the moment any companion was an improvement on travelling alone. I told them, "We ought to get moving. More of them could show up. . . . What is he doing?"

Ram had a ten-pound rock. He was smashing the leg bones of the man he'd killed. Narayan said, "Ram. That's enough. We're leaving."

Ram looked puzzled. He thought. Then he shrugged and discarded the rock. Narayan didn't explain his actions. He told me, "We saw one fair-sized group this morning, maybe twenty men. Maybe we can catch up."

"That would be a start." I realized I was starving. I hadn't eaten since before the battle. I shared out what I'd taken off the dead elephant. It didn't help much. Ram went at it like it was a feast, now completely indifferent to the dead.