"David Drake - General 03 - The Anvil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

"Bloody hell," Major Ehwardo Poplanich said, sotto voce. "How long is
this going to take? If I'd wanted to sit on my butt and be bored, I
would have stayed home on the estate." He ran a hand over his thinning
brown hair.
He was part of the reason that Raj Whitehall and his dozen Companions
had plenty of space to themselves on the padded sofa-bench that ran
down the side of the anteroom. Nobody at Court wanted to stand too
close to a close relation of the last Poplanich Governor. Quite a few
wondered why Poplanich was with Raj; Thom Poplanich had disappeared in
Raj's company years before, and Thom's brother Des had died when Raj
put down a bungled coup attempt against Governor Barholm.
Another part of the reason the courtiers avoided them was doubt about
exactly how Raj stood with the Chair, of course.
The rest of it was the other Companions, the dozen or so close
followers Raj had collected in his first campaign on the eastern
frontier or in the Southern Territories. Many of the courtiers had
spent their adult lives in the Palace, waiting in corridors like this.
The Companions seemed part of the scene at first, in dress or walking-
out uniforms like many of the men not in Court robes or religious
vestments. Until you came closer and saw the scars, and the eyes.
"We'll wait as long as His Supremacy wants us to, Ehwardo," Colonel
Gerrin Staenbridge said, swinging one elegantly booted foot over his
knee. He looked to be exactly what he was: a stylish, handsome
professional soldier from a noble family of moderate wealth, a man of
wit and learning, and a merciless killer. "Consider yourself lucky to
have an estate in a county that's boring; back home in Descott County
-- "
" -- bandits come down the chimney once a week on Starday," Ehwardo
finished. "Isn't that right, M'lewis?"
"I wouldna know, ser," the rat-faced little man said virtuously.
The Companions were unarmed, despite their dress uniforms -- the Life
Guard troopers at the doors and intervals along the corridor were fully
equipped -- but Raj suspected that the captain of the 5th Descott's
Scout Troop had something up his sleeve.
Probably a wire garrote, he thought. M'lewis had enlisted one step
ahead of the noose, having made Bufford Parish -- the most lawless
part of not-very-lawful Descott County -- too hot for comfort. Raj
had found his talents useful enough to warrant promotion to
commissioned rank, after nearly flogging the man himself at their first
meeting -- a matter of a farmer's pig lifted as the troops went past.
The Scout Troop was full of M'lewis's friends, relatives and neighbors;
it was also known to the rest of the 5th as the Forty Thieves, not
without reason.
Captain Bartin Foley looked up from sharpening the inner curve of the
hook that had replaced his left hand His face had been boyishly pretty
when Raj first saw him, four years before. Officially he'd been an aide
to Gerrin Staenbridge, unofficially a boyfriend-in-residence. He'd had
both hands, then, too.
"Why don't you?" he asked M'lewis. "Know about bandits coming down the
chimney, that is."