"Cook, Glen - SS - Severed Heads" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

"You know what they'll say." Narriman wrapped his cloak about her. "Ferial and Feras will tell what they saw. People will think I went willingly. They'll call me whore. And what they call me I'll have to be. What man would have me now?"
Mowfik signed. He heard truth. When the hunters returned, chastened by losing the man in their own territory, they would seek excuses for failing, would sec in a less righteous light. "Get dressed."
"Let me die, Father. Let me take my shame off your shoulders."
"Stop that. Get dressed. We have things to do. We'll sell while people are sympathetic. We started over here. We can start again somewhere else. Up. Into your clothes. Do you want them to see you like this? Time to make the brave show."
All her life he had said that, whenever people hurt her. "Time to make the brave show."
Tears streaming, she dressed. "Did you say that to Mother, too?" Her mother had been brave, a northern girl who had come south out of love. She had been more outsider than Mowfik.
"Yes. Many times. And I should've held my tongue. I should've stayed in the north. None of this would have happened had we stayed with her people."
Mowfik's partner did not try to profit from his distress. He paid generously. Mowfik did not have to waste war booty to get away.

VI

A Captain Al Jahez, whom Mowfik had served in the wars, gave him a position as huntsman. He and Narriman had now fled eight hundred miles from Wadi al Hamamah.
Narriman began to suspect the worst soon after their arrival. She remained silent till it became impossible to fool herself. She went to Mowfik because there was nowhere else to go.
"Father, I'm with child."
He did not react in the traditional way. "Yes. His purpose was to breed another of his kind."
"What will we do?" She was terrified. Her tribe had been unforgiving. The settled peoples were only slightly less so in these matters.
"There's no need to panic. I discussed mis with Al Jahez when we arrived. He's a hard and religious man, but from el Aswad originally. He knows what comes out of the Jebal. His goatherd is old. He'll send us into the hills to replace him. We'll stay away a few years while he stamps your widowhood into everyone's mind. You'll come back looking young for your age. Men will do battle for such a widow."
"Why are you so kind? I've been nothing but trouble since that rider came down the wadi."
"You're my family. All I have. I live the way of the Disciple, unlike so many who profess his creed because it's politic."
"And yet you bow to Karkur."
He smiled. "One shouldn't overlook any possibility. I'll speak with Al Jahez. We'll go within the week."
Life in the hills, goatherding, was not unpleasant. The land was hard, reminding Narriman of home. But this was tamer country. Wolves and lions were few. The kids were not often threatened.
As her belly swelled and the inevitable drew nearer, she grew
ever more frightened. "Father, I'm not old enough for this. I'm going to die. I know it."
"No, you won't." He told her that her mother, too, had grown frightened. That all women were afraid. He did not try to convince her that her fears were groundless, only that fear was more dangerous than giving birth. "I'll be with you, I won't let anything happen. And AJ Jahez promises he'll send his finest midwife."
"Father, I don't understand why you're so good to me. And I'm baffled as to why he's so good to you. He can't care that much because you rode in his company."
Mowfik shrugged. "Perhaps because I saved his life at the Battle of the Circles. Also, there are more just men than you believe."
"You never talk about the wars. Except about places you saw."
"Those aren't happy memories, Little Fox. Dying and killing and dying. And in the end, nothing gained, either for myself or the glory of the Lord. Will you tell the young ones about these days when you're old? Those days weren't happy, but I saw more than any al Muburak before or since."
He was the only one of a dozen volunteers who survived. And maybe that, instead of the foreign wife, was why he had become an outcast. The old folks resented him for living when their sons were dead.
"What will we do with a baby. Father?"
"What? What people always do. Raise him to be a man."
"It'll be a boy, will it?"
"I doubt me not it will, but a girl will be as welcome." He chuckled.
"Will you hate him?"
"Hate him? We are talking about my daughter's child. I can hate the father, but not the infant. The child is innocent."
"You did travel in strange lands. No wonder the old ones didn't like you."
"Old ones pass on. Ideas are immortal. So says the Disciple."
She felt better afterward, but her fear never evaporated.

VII

"A fine son," the old woman said with a toothless smile. "A fine son. I foretell you now, little mistress, he'll be a great one. See it here, in his hands." She held the tiny, purplish, wrinkled, squalling thing high. "And he came forth with the cap. Only the
truly destined, the chosen ones, come forth with that. Aye, you've mothered a mighty one."
Narriman smiled though she heard not a tenth of the babble. She cared only that the struggle was over, that the pain had receded. There was a great warmth in her for the child, but she hadn't the strength to express it.
Mowfik ducked into the tent. "Sadhra. Is everything all right?" His face was pale. Dimly, Narriman realized he had been frightened too.
"Both came through perfectly. Al Jahez has a godson of whom he can be proud." She repeated her predictions.
"Old Mother, you'd better not tell him that. That smacks of superstition. He's strict about religious deviation."
"The decrees of men, be they mere men or Chosen of the Lord, can't change natural law. Omens are omens."
"May be. May be. Shouldn't you give her the child?"