"Peter David - Sir Apropos 01 - Sir Apropos Of Nothing" - читать интересную книгу автора (David Peter)

collecting them--these are all well and good in the abstract. Faced with a sword to your throat, however,
your priorities tend to shift. Rhetoric takes a second chair to saving your own skin. My understanding is
that they begged, pleaded for their lives. They wept, they entreated, they soiled their breeches...in short,
they made godawful fools of themselves.

Once again, Granite could have gotten out of the entire Pell mess with a minimum of fuss and muss.
Not old blockhead, no. The unmanly wailing of the Brigadiers offended Granite's sensibilities. He felt that
his valuable time had been wasted rounding up such clearly unworthy foes. This set his anger all
a-bubbling, and he needed an outlet for his rage. As it turned out, the only available target was the
Brigadiers.

So he put the stupid bastards to the sword, every one of them. Every one except Tacit. Tacit had not
been captured with the rest. They tried to take him, to be sure. But when Granite made his sweep, which
dragged in the rest, Tacit had managed to fight his way through it, battling with the ferocity of a manticore
when faced with death. His freedom had not come without a price. He lost half an ear and his right eye,
poor bastard. He took refuge in the Elderwoods, his old stomping grounds, which he and I frequented as
children. Once he'd reached there, he was a phantom. There he healed, and eventually returned to Pell
with an eyepatch and a new and deadly resolve. Tossed capriciously in the crucible, he'd come through it
forged into a cold and formidable enemy.

He rallied the people of Pell in a way that no others of the Brigade had managed, and he turned the
entire town into an army. Every man, woman, and child rallied behind him, refusing to pay taxes and
demanding the head and private parts of Granite.

Granite obliged. He brought his head, his private parts, and his sword arm--all still connected to the
rest of his sculpted body--and he also brought along armored troops. They laid siege to the town, and
within hours all of Pell was aflame and easily sixty percent of the populace was dead, and another twenty
percent or so was dying.

Naturally this resulted in an eighty percent drop in taxes from Pell, which was what all of the to-do
was about in the first place. Granite, however, had lost sight of that.

King Runcible had not.

He didn't get truly angry--he rarely did. But he informed Granite that he was not happy, no, not happy
at all with the situation. Granite hemmed, hawed, made apologies, and tried to defend the extreme actions
he had taken. "We shall have to think on this," Runcible said finally, which is what he always said when
faced with something unpleasant. He then ordered Granite to patrol the outer borders of the kingdom.

I was present when the order was given, standing discreetly behind Sir Umbrage of the Flaming
Nether Regions, the elderly knight whom it was my "fortune" to be squiring at the time. It was easy to
remain out of sight behind Umbrage. He was such an uninteresting bastard that no one glanced in his
direction. He would just stand there, long, skinny, white-haired, and jowly beneath his scraggly beard,
leaning on his sword and nodding as if he were paying attention to what was going on.

Granite bowed, nodded, and left immediately.
 I, opportunistic little creep that I was, saw my chance to have yet another toss with the Lady Rosalie.
I waited until I saw Granite ride away on that great charger of his, and then went straight to the chambers
that he shared with his lady.