"David Drake - Belisarius 3 - Destiny's Shield" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

The ambassador was now much closer. He was rather tall, and slender of build.
His complexion was perhaps a bit darker than that of most Greeks. His face was
lean-jawed and aquiline, dominated by a large nose. His beard was cut in the
short square style favored by Persians.
The ambassador was wearing the costume of a Persian nobleman. His gray hair
was capped by the traditional gold-embroidered headdress, which Persians
called a citaris. His tunic, though much like a Roman one, had sleeves which
reached all the way down to the wrists. His trousers also reached far down,
almost covering the red leather of his boots.
Seeing the bright color of the ambassador's boot-tips, the Emperor felt a
momentary pang. His old father -- his real father -- had a pair of boots just
like those. "Parthian boots," they were called. His father favored them, as
did many of his Thracian cataphracts.
The ambassador was now close enough that the Emperor could make out his eyes.
Brown eyes, just like his father's. (His old father; his new father had no
eyes.)
But the Emperor could detect none of the warmth which was always in his old
father's eyes. The Persian's eyes seemed cold to him. The Emperor lifted his
gaze. High above, the huge mosaic figures on the walls of the throne room
stared down upon him. They were saints, he knew. Very holy folk. But their
eyes, too, seemed cold. Darkly, the Emperor suspected they probably hadn't
been very nice either. The severe expressions on their faces reminded him of
his tutors. Sour old men, whose only pleasure in life was finding fault with
their charge.
He felt as if he were being buried alive.
"I'm hot," he complained.
"Of course you're hot," whispered Theodora. "You're wearing imperial robes on
a warm day in April. What do you expect?"
Unkindly:
"Get used to it." Then:
"Now, act properly. The ambassador is here."
Twenty feet away, the Persian ambassador's retinue came to a halt. The
ambassador stepped forward two paces and prostrated himself on the thick,
luxurious rug which had been placed for that purpose on the tiled floor of the
throne room.
That rug, the Emperor knew, was only brought out from its special storage
place for the use of envoys representing the Persian King of Kings, the
Shahanshah. It was the best rug the Roman Empire owned, he had heard.
Persia was the traditional great rival of the Roman Empire. It wouldn't do to
offend its representatives. No, it wouldn't do at all.
The Persian ambassador was rising. Now, he was stepping forward. The
ambassador extended his hand, holding the scroll which proclaimed his status
to the Roman court. The motion brought a slight wince to the face of the
ambassador, and the Roman Emperor's fear multiplied. The wince, he knew, was
caused by the great wound which the ambassador had received to his shoulder
three years before.
The Emperor's real father had given him that wound, at a famous place called
Mindouos.
He's going to be mean to me.
"I bring greetings to the Basileus of Rome from my master Khusrau Anushirvan,