"David Drake - General 08 - The Tyrant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

In this, too, he would be honest. It was always tempting to blame others for one's ills. But, in truth, the
rot within the Confederacy of Vanbert was not of Emerald origin. If anything, he suspected, the Emeralds
might be part of the solution.

One Emerald, anyway. Adrian Gellert, the father of Demansk's grandchild.

No, Demansk knew full well the Confederation was rotting from within, and the rot had no alien source.
Simple greed, and sloth, and envy, and corruptionтАФall homegrown. Like gout of the spirit. Inevitable,
perhaps, a disease brought upon itself by a nation which had grown too powerful too quickly. Or, to use
a more homely simile, the stomach-ache of a reckless child after stuffing himself at the dinner table.

Demansk's jaws tightened. He had just selected himself to be the purge, after all. And, here also, he
would not hide behind simile and metaphor. His purge would be far more brutal than that of a parent
forcing too much food out of a child. Blood, not vomitтАФthough there would be plenty of that,
tooтАФwould be the product of his labor.
***

That thought set his feet moving again, and he found himself wandering through the gardens anew. With
the self-awareness that had always been part of him, Demansk understood within a short time where his
feet were leading him.

Soon enough, he was there, standing before it. The statue of Wodep, painted in red. He stared up at the
image, for a moment, his own green eyes meeting the black-painted eyes of the savage-looking idol.
Then, lowered his head.

Not in hesitation or fear, simply in thought. He had never cared much for that statue. Odd, perhaps,
given his undoubted skill at the god's art. But Demansk had never been an enthusiast of battle, much less
a lover. That was why, he sometimes thought, he was so good at it.
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No, his head was simply lowered in thought. Having decided upon treason, it remained to implement it.
And some of that implementation would involve the clash of armies in the field. Some, not allтАФDemansk
allowed himself the hope that much of it might be accomplished using less ferocious means.

But, as his thoughts of the coming campaign followed their own steps, he soon relinquished the hope.
True, some of it would involve political maneuver. As ruthless as war, perhaps, though not as bloody. But
some of it . . .

He could see no way around it. At the heart of Vanbert's rot lay the great landed estates. (His own
numbered among them, he reminded himself.) They had, like a cancer, destroyed Vanbert's yeomanry
and replaced it with a huge caste of slave laborers. Conquered foreigners, for the most part.

Demansk would do what he could to make the revolution as painless as possible. But he had no
illusions. The overseers on his own estate were mild, by Vanbert standards. Demansk saw to it. But even
his own slaves would be prone to violence when the yoke was lifted. The slaves on many of the great
estates would explode like a volcano.