"Cook, Glen - Filed Teeth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Fetch returned to Lord Hammer's stirrup. The man in black proceeded.
I studied the trees.
There was something repulsive about them. Something frightening. They were so widely spaced it seemed they couldn't stand one another. There were no saplings. Most were half dead, hollow, or down and rotting. They were arranged in neat, long rows, a stark orchard of death...
The day was about to die without a whimper when Lord Hammer halted again.
It hadn't seemed possible that our morale could sink. Not after the mountains and the ice storm. But that weird forest depressed us till we scarcely cared if we lived or died. The band would have disintegrated had it not become so much an extension of Lord Hammer's will.
We massed behind our fell captain.
Before him lay a meadow circumscribed by a tumbled wall of field stone. The wall hadn't been mended in ages. And yet...
It still performed its function.
"Sorcery!" Brandy hissed.
Others took it up.
"What'd you expect?" Chenyth countered. He nodded toward Lord Hammer.
It took no training to sense the wizardry.
Ice-free, lush grass crowded the circle of stone. Wildflowers fluttered their petals in the breeze.
We Kaveliners crowded Fetch. Chenyth tickled her sides. She yelped. "Stop it!" She was extremely ticklish. Anyone else she would have slapped silly. She told him, "It's still alive. Lord Hammer was afraid it might have died."
Remarkable. She said nothing conversational to anyone else, ever.
Lord Hammer turned slightly. Fetch devoted her attention to him. He moved an elbow, twitched a finger. I didn't see anything else pass between them.
Fetch turned to us. "Listen up! These are the rules for guys who want to stay healthy. Follow Lord Hammer like his shadow. Don't climb over the wall. Don't even touch it. You'll get dead if you do."
The black horseman circled the ragged wall to a gap where a gate might once have stood. He turned in and rode to the heart of the meadow.
Fetch scampered after him, her big brown eyes locked on him.
How Lord Hammer communicated with her I don't know. A finger-twitch, a slight movement of hand or head, and she would talk-talk-talk. We didn't speculate much aloud. He was a sorcerer. You avoid things that might irritate his kind.
She proclaimed, "We need a tent behind each fire pit. Five on the outer circle, five on the inner. The rest here in the middle. Keep your fires burning all night. Sentinels wil be posted."
"Yeah?" Brandy grumbled. "What the hell do we do for wood? Plant acorns and wait?"
"Out there are two trees that are down. Take wood off them.
Pick up any fallen branches this side of the others. It'll be wet, but it's the best we can do. Do not go past a live tree. Lord Hammer isn't sure he can project his protection that far."
I didn't pay much attention. Nobody did. It was warm there. I shed my pack and flung myself to the ground. I rolled around on the grass, grabbing handfuls and inhaling the newly mown hay scent.
There had to be some dread sorceries animating that circle. Nobody cared. The place was as cozy as journey's end.
There is always a price. That's how magic works.
Old Toamas lay back on his pack and smiled in pure joy. He closed his eyes and slept. Even Brandy said nothing about making him do his share.
Lord Hammer let the euphoria bubble for ten minutes.
Fetch started round the troop. "Brandy. You and Russ and Little, put your tent on that point. Will, Chenyth, Toamas, yours goes here. Kelpie..." And so on. When everyone was assigned, she erected her master's black tent. All the while Lord Hammer sat his ruby-eyed stallion and stared northeastward. He showed the intensity of deep concentration. Was he reading the trail?
Nothing seemed to catch him off guard.
Where was he leading us? Why? What for? We didn't know. Not a whit. Maybe even Fetch didn't. Chenyth couldn't charm a hint from her.
We knew two things. Lord Hammer paid well. And, within restrictions known only to himself, he took care of his followers. In a way I can't articulate, he had won our loyalties.
His being what he was was ample proof we faced something grim, yet he had won us to the point where we felt we had a stake in it too. We wanted him to succeed. We wanted to help him succeed.
Odd. Very odd.
I have taken his gold, I thought, briefly remembering a man I had known a long time ago. He had been a member of the White Company of the Mercenaries Guild. They were a monastic order of soldiers with what, then, 1 had thought of as the strangest concept of honor...
What made me think of Mikhail? I wondered.

IV

Lord Hammer suddenly dismounted and strode toward Chenyth and me. I thought, thunderhead! Huge, black, irresistible.
I'm no coward. I endured the slaughterhouse battles of the Great Eastern Wars without flinching. I stood fast at Second Baxendala while the Tervola sent the savan dalage ravening amongst us night after night. I maintained my courage after Dichiara, which was our worst defeat. And I persevered at Palmisano, though the bodies piled into little mountains and so many men died that the savants later declared there could be no more war for generations. For three years I had faced the majestic, terrible hammer of Shinsan's might without quelling.
But when Lord Hammer bore down on me, that grim death mask coming like an arrowhead engraved with my name, I slunk aside like a whipped dog.
He had that air. You knew he was as mighty as any force of Nature, as cruel as Death Herself. Cowering was instinctive.
He looked me in the eye. I couldn't see anything through his mask. But a coldness hit me. It made the cold of that land seem summery.
He looked at Chenyth, too. Baby brother didn't flinch.
I guess he was too innocent. He didn't know when to be scared.
Lord Hammer dropped to one knee beside Toamas.
Gloved hands probed the old man's ribs. Toamas cringed. Then his terror gave way to a beatific smile.
Lord Hammer strode back to where Fetch pursued her regular evening ritual of battling to erect their tent.