"Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 07 - The Dragon and the G" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

But the urge to look was strong. Jim was not without sympathy for those who did lift their heads.
The sight was almost hypnotic. He had needed to fight hard against looking, himself.

On long shots the arrows looked like a cloud of small black matchsticks, rising and rising, until
they abruptly nosed down and began coming back to earth with unbelievable swiftness. Look up
at them as they rose, and you risked an arrow in the face or throat when they fell. Keep your eyes
down, and the three-foot shaft with its two-inch-wide triangular warhead might knock you down;
but it would have to glance off your helmet or lodge in a shoulder. In the second case, at least,
you had a chance of surviving.

The problem was more than getting the servants and tenants to keep their eyes down. The force
threatening Malencontri right now would be a real danger only if allowed to develop into oneтАФif,
for instance, they noticed that the spears and helmets showing above the battlements were on
tenant farmers rather than experienced fighting men.

Unlike the raiding party, led by Sir Peter Carley that had attacked the Castle last winter, these
attackers could not be ignorant of the fact that this was the residence of a magician. Among the
lower classes all was known, when peasants came togetherтАФand these hundred and fifty or two
hundred men outside his walls were peasants, probably a remnant of a large peasant march.

Jim remembered, from the history he had known before he came here from the twentieth century,
that there had been a number of such revolts during this fourteenth century, of which the best-
known was that led by Wat Tyler. Tyler's group bad broken up after he was pulled from his
horse, during a confrontation near London, by the Lord Mayor, Sir William Walworth, and
eventually killed.

After every such revolt, many of the peasants who hadn't been killed found themselves unable to
go home. Some held together and began to move about, living off the land.

They were the ones who had nothing to go back toтАФeither they had been put off their tenant land
to begin with, or they were runaway serfs, or they knew they would not be accepted back by their
particular lord, master, or superior. Some had been robbers or outlaws even before. Now
homeless, hunted, and desperate, they no longer put much value on their lives anyway- that might
explain why they were willing to attack the castle of a known magicianтАФand the countryside
generally believed that magicians, like dragons, had hoardsтАФwealth beyond imagining.

For the outlaws and other human flotsam attracted to the group, taking Malencontri would be a
long hope at best. That part of the group would only become a serious threat if a weakness were

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seen in the Castle's defenses. Unless the bitter, wild hatred of the homeless men reached the point
where they stormed the walls simply because it was a castle with people in it like those who had
starved, dispossessed, or even killed them and theirs. For some, death was unimportant if they
could take some fat lordling to Hell with them.

They had no siege engines, but a number were certain to be unemployed men-at-arms, with some
training, and able to build scaling ladders; with them they could put more men over the curtain
wall at one time than Jim, with his dozen armsmen plus perhaps forty untrained servants, could