"Brian Daley - Doomfarers of Coramonde" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daley Brian)

"Do we love this new learning, you ask? Well enough, I say, to leave this fief forever if we must,
rather than submit again to our overlord."
Springbuck was silent, calculating what their hard life had cost these old souls. Their children
gone, life must now be spent in constant labor, since the sons and daughters who would have cared
for them in the winter of their days would never return. It was, perhaps, the end of the man's
name forever when he died, with no one to keep his memory alive or light incense for him at the
altar of his gods.
In this light, the war that Springbuck had contemplated against Fania and Strongblade was not so
brave or glittering a thing to entertain.
While he'd been angry at such disrespect shown for a liege, he was fascinated with what energies
had been evoked in this aged breast. The peasants were yanking at the donkey's harness again. And
critical choices can be made as quickly and as simply as this: the Prince unsheathed Bar and,
leaning down, struck the beast loudly across its rump with the fiat of his blade. It bucked to its
feet, kicking the cart behind it, and the couple tugged it into motion once more.
The heir to the Ku-Mor-Mai trailed behind.
The moat outside the castle was long dry and choked with high weeds. One of the double doors
beyond the drawbridge had been left ajar, doubtless for such latecomers as they. The gates, like
the drawbridge, were of old wood but looked sound. The keep's walls were worn but substantial,
though rather low by modern standards.
Springbuck brought up the rear into a courtyard where plants had pushed up insistently through
defeated cobblestones. There was much debris in sightтАФbroken tools, a useless wagon wheel,
forgotten benchesтАФand after three nights in the open, he was sourly willing to wager that the roof
of the place leaked.
The little courtyard was filled with villagers dashing to and fro. Standing atop a wagon at the
center of it all, giving commands to bring them to some semblance of
40
THE DOOMFARERS OF CORAMONDE
order, was the man known as Van Duyn, whom Springbuck recognized from his one previous visit to
Earth-fast. He was a tall, lean man with gray-white hair and a dour look about him that had made
the Prince wonder if anything ever quite satisfied him. His fac'e was creased with worry, and a
strange metal framework secured a circle of glass before each of his eyes. Springbuck had once
reflected on a possible connection between this and Yardiff Bey's single ocular, but it was said
that Van Duyn's lenses simply helped him see more clearly. A small part of the Prince wondered now
if he might be able to acquire such a device for himself.
Springbuck began to understand the discomfort of his father, the Protector Suzerain, at hearing
the thoughts of Van Duyn; the man could well bring disaster and chaos to Coramonde. What caused
usually docile commoners to respond to him so readily, to jump with a will to his every order and
stand by him so staunchly?
"See that you use the barbed arrows first," the out-lander was saying, just as the Prince caught
his eye. "Are you a Queen's man, sir?" Van Duyn snapped curtly. "With some new mandamus of
arrest?"
Thankful that his war mask hid his features, the son of Surehand responded, "I was unaware of your
predicament when. I came to hear your new teachings."
The outlander laughed, scant humor in it. "My 'predicament' grows rapidly worse," he shot back.
"Of these good people, one in three sees fit to offer his help. And you? A week ago I would have
welcomed you as a new student, but now you'll have to run or fight before you can learn." He
seemed to think his own words over for a moment. "Perhaps you'll prize the knowledge more for all
of that. What do you say?"
The Prince considered this. He had nowhere else to go. But to stay here was to court capture or
death. They тАвwere both the same for him, he realized.