"Cook, Glen - The Black Company 04 - The Silver Spike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Fish came back an hour later.

"That was quick. Find a place?"

"Not a very good one. River's moved some since I was up here. Banks two hundred yards over there. Not much room to run. Let me look at them feet."

Smeds stuck them out. Fish squatted, grunted, touched a couple of places. Smeds winced. "Bad?" he asked.

"Seen worse. Not often. Got some trenchfoot getting started, too. Others probably got a touch, too." He looked vacant for a moment. "My fault. I knew you was green and Tully was as organized as a henhouse. Shoulda not let him get in such a big hurry. You get in a hurry you always end up paying."

"Decided what you're going to do with your cut yet?" "Nope. You get to my age you don't go looking that far ahead. Good chance you might not get there. One day at a time, boy. I'm going to get some stuff for a poultice."

Smeds watched the straight-backed, white-haired man fade into the forest silently. He tried to blank his mind. He did not want to be alone with his thoughts.

Fish returned with a load of weeds. "Chop these into little pieces and put them in this sack. Equal amounts of each kind." There were three kinds. "When the sack is stuffed close it up and pound on it with this stick. Roll it over once in a while. All the leaves got to get good and bruised." "How long?"

"Give it a thousand, twelve hundred whacks. Then dump it in this pot. Put in a cup of water and stir it up." "Then what?"

"Then do another sack. And stir the pot every couple minutes." The old man faded into the woods without saying where he was going.

Smeds was pounding his third sack when Fish returned. He sniffed. "Guess you can do a job right when you want." He settled, took the pot. "Good. That sack will be enough."

He turned Smeds's oldest shirt into bindings for his feet, packed them with soggy, mangled leaves. A cool tingle began soothing his pains.

Fish made the others treat their feet, too. He did his own.

Smeds leaned against his tree, troubled. He did not think he was hard enough or bad enough to kill the old man.

"There between sixty and eighty people still living over there," Tully said. "Mostly soldiers. But we heard them talking like a big bunch would be leaving in a couple days. Wouldn't hurt to wait them out on that. We could finish up our scouting."

Scouting the Barrowland started after sunset, by the light of a quarter moon. The village was dark and silent. It looked a good time to prowl the open ground.

Out the four went in a loose line abreast barely in sight of one another, Tully guiding on the tree. It was not much of a tree by Smeds's estimation. Right then it looked like a fat-trunked silver-bark poplar sapling about fifteen feet tall. He could not see anything remarkable there. Why the reputation?

He reached a point where the angle was right, caught a glint of moonlight off silver. It was real! And having gotten that one glance, he began to feel the throbbing dark power of it, like it was not metal at all but an icicle of pure hatred.

He shuddered, forced his gaze away.

It was real. The wealth was there to be had. If they could take it.

He hurried forward. A long, low, stony ridge barred his path. Odd that such a thing should be there, but he did not connect it with the dragon that was supposed to have devoured the infamous sorcerer Bomanz before being slain itself. Maybe if there had been more light to reveal what his hands and feet exposed as they disturbed the masking dirtЕ

He was near the top when he heard the sound. Like an animal snuffling. And another sound beneath it, like something scratching at the earth. He looked for the others. He could see no one but Tully, who was staring at the tree from ten feet away. There was something odd about the tree. The tops of its leaves glimmered with a faint bluish ghost light.

Maybe it was a trick of the rising moon.

He got up where the footing was good, stood, glanced at the tree again. Definitely something weird going on there. The whole thing was glowing.

He looked down in front of him. His heart stilled.