"David Drake - Belisarius 2 - In The Heart Of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

see, now, so he let the tears flow freely. Then, after a moment, raised his
blurry vision and gazed at the distant, splintering, brick walls of rebel
Ranapur.
Ranapur will fall, soon. The Malwa beasts will savage its people, even worse
than they savaged my own.
He lowered his gaze, wiped the tears from his face, watched the horse feed. He
enjoyed watching the mare's quiet pleasure as she ate. It reminded him, a bit,
of the joy he had taken watching his wife and children eat the food he had
always placed on their table. Until the Malwa came, and devoured his family
whole.
Enjoy your triumph, Malwa cobras. It will not last. You have let the mongoose
himself into your nest.
The horse was done feeding. Holkar led her into the thatched stalls which the
Roman soldiers had erected for their horses. The stalls were very large, and
completely shielded from outside view. An outside view which might have
wondered, perhaps, why such a small body of men would need such a large number
of horses. And such fine horses!
Indeed, they were very fine. Holkar was fond of the mare, but he knew she was
the poorest of the mounts which rested in the stalls. The Romans never rode
the fine ones, the superb riding steeds which Holkar himself had purchased,
one by one, from the various merchants scattered about the siege of Ranapur.
Horses which were always purchased late in the day, and led into their stalls
in the dark of night.
His master had never explained the reasons for those purchases, nor had Holkar
inquired.
Nor had Belisarius explained the reason for purchases which were still more
odd.
Not two days ago, at his master's command, Holkar had purchased three
elephants. Three small, well-tamed, docile creatures, which were kept in a
huge but simple tent located in a small clearing in the forest, many miles
from the siege, and many miles from the official camp of the Romans and
Ethiopians.
Holkar had asked no questions. He had not asked why the tent should be so far
away, and so different in appearance from the grandiose pavilion which the
Ethiopian prince Eon had erected for himself and his concubines. Nor why the
elephants themselves should be so different in their appearance from the two
huge and unruly war elephants which the Ethiopians maintained as their public
mounts. Nor why the elephants were only fed at night, and only by the African
slave named Ousanas, whose invisibility in the darkness was partly due to the
color of his skin, but mostly to his incredible skill as a hunter and a
woodsman.
No, Holkar had simply obeyed his master's commands, and not asked for any
explanation of them. The Maratha did not think that his master could have
explained, even had he asked. Not clearly, at least. Not precisely. The mind
of Belisarius did not work that way. His thoughts never moved in simple
straight lines, but always at an angle. Where other men thought of the next
step, Belisarius thought of the next fork in the road. And where other men,
coming upon that fork, would see a choice between right and left, Belisarius
was as likely to burrow a hole or take to the trees.
He closed the thatch door to the stalls. There was no lock, nor need of one.