"Duane, Diane - Keeper of the City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

For the Chicago Mafta, with love from the usual suspects
And for Smokey and Spock and all the other mad cats who've graced our lives
KEEPER OF THE CITY
A Bantam Spectra Boot I August 1989
All rights reserved. Copyright C 1989 by Bill Fawcttt & Associates.
Cover art copyright C 1989 by Steve Assel.
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PROLOGUE
ft
Le stood there among the lesser hills just after dawn, just before the edge of the desert, and in silence looked down through the shallow valley at the little city. Perhaps this will be home at last, he thought. Gods, I'm tired.
It was hardly the largest town he had ever seen. Basically it was nothing more but a group of little hillocksЧ one of the last before the land became perfectly flat and the green of the lowland country turned to the scrubby brown of the desert. Those three small hills were still green toward their tops, flowering into houses farther down the slopes. One hill was taller than the others, and had the remains of some old ring-fort at the top of it, all dark stone, ruinous. Around the hills was built a wall, and inside it, almost swallowed by building, were signs of several others, smaller ones, long outgrown. This town had done well for such a tiny outpost, so far from the lands where none but mrem dwell. It was dangerously far east, this .town: too close entirely, by the reckoning of the old days, to the lands across the desert, the lands where ran the writ of the Lords of the East, the unfurred ones, the ones who used magic.
He shivered a bit, remembering. It had not been all that long, a matter of some years, since he had met and fought alongside Talwe the hunter, who became Talwe the lord of Cragsclaw city, a lord among the other Lords of Ar. Reswen had been several things himself at that time: a commander of mercenary mrem, but also a friend to the Kings of Ar, and to one king in particular.
"Will you do it?" Andelemarian had said all those many
viii Guardians of The Three
months ago. It was late at night in the palace of Ar, in the king's rooms. Nothing stood between them but a flask of wine and a couple of glasses, often filled and often drained that night, and a lamp with a wick that needed trimming. "It is a long way from here, but if any city needs our paw held over it secretly, it is that one. Niau is a bastion, one of the most distant and most threatened ones, against the encroachment of the East."
It was always hard to argue with a king, but the wine had made Reswen feel a little scrappy that night. "Nothing from the East has been near Niau for many years," he said. "The desert is wide there . . . and there's nothing there to attract their attention. The place is tiny. Herders, a few merchantsЧ"
"It will not always be tiny," the king said. "Those merchants are becoming too successful. Time will come that the Easterners will look that way . . . and they may look at Niau as a likely place to attack, since as you say they have not been seen or heard of in those parts for many a year now. For who takes serious defense against legends? Who believes in dragons, who hasn't been burnt?"
ХReswen twitched. He had been burnt, more than once. He had no trouble believing in the liskash, the lizard-things of the East, in all their many kindsЧlords and servants, the wise-worms, and the dragons that breathed fire. There were no deadlier enemies to mrem, except fire itself, which mrem used with a care born of old fear.
The king leaned back, switching his tail slightly, and then shrugged. "And then they may not come at all," he said, glancing up; the light of the little lamp gilded his white fur, and caught in his eyes. Their look was humorous for the moment. "But that's not a chance that we can take. If they don't come, well. But if they do, I would have someone there who can find out what they're up to before they know they've been found. And I can think of no one better fitted to defend a city, whether it knows it needs defense or not. Will you do it, Reswen? I would be glad to know that city was being watched over by one of my own. And whoever follows me would be glad to know it as well."
Reswen had sat and thought about that for a while. On
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the one hand, he wanted to please the king. He would not be holding office in Ar much longer. His age was troubling him, had been for some time, and he had begun to remind people more and more often that it was tune the kingship rested in younger paws. On the other hand, there was nothing much to look forward to in this mission. Ahead of him, in that little city, would lie nothing but secretive-ness, a long hiding while he became used to the ways of the city, became one of its people, and used that oneness to protect the place from what might happen ... or what might not. It would be a surveillance of considerable length, on the edge of an inhospitable desert, a long way away from the more cosmopolitan cities of the world.
But there were other considerations for him than his own comfort, these days. He had been rather shocked to find that he had developed a taste for being the defender of a little piece of the world, the one responsible for keeping it intact, no matter what others, perhaps in higher places, might think he was doing.
"I can offer you no overt help," the king said. "No one can know that Ar is working inside the walls of Niau. The independence of these small border cities is a great thing ... in some ways, their chief defense. I would not have that interfered with. As far as they are concerned, you will have left my serviceЧunderstandable, for what use is a mercenary in peace?Чand gone seeking other employ. But if you accept this charge, I daresay you will find other compensations for your stay in Niau. Somehow I doubt that you will stop at being a mere captain of mercenaries."
Reswen grinned at that. "No, King," he said. "I would doubt that myself. I'll find some position, sooner or later, that suits my talents."
Andelemarian had smiled. So simply, and without any explicit declaration, the decision had been made. After a few days' worth of good-byes, Reswen had begun his long journey to the easternmost parts of Ar.
And now the journey was almost done, and he stood on the scrubby little hillside and looked down past Niau's grazing lands and townlands, to the city itself. It looked very lonely, very isolated. Beyond it, the desert shimmered in the first heat of what promised to be an intoler-
x Guardians of The Three
able day, and the hard blue sky came down and met its distant edge with brutal sharpness. It would not do so for long, be knew. The heat-haze would rise, and the horizon .would become a blurred silvery thing, out of which anything might emerge without warning. Of course, hardly anything ever did, the people of the city would not be too cautious about the edge'of the world. But Reswen would have some time, some years perhaps, to change that, before the threat that the king foresaw came true.
From far down the valley, from one of those three walled hills, came a low deep sound: a horn, the signal for the opening of the city gates. He smiled a little to himself . . . they were still, at least, that cautious. Reswen bent down to pick up the pack he had been carrying, and shouldered it again. Then he went down the hill, toward Niau: Reswen Kingfriend, hero of the battle of Cragsclaw, soon to be merely Reswen, unemployed mercenary, looking for a place. The city guard, perhaps, if they had any vacant posts. It would not be a bad start for one who would slowly and carefully work himself up through the ranks, always keeping his oaths to protect the city. . . .
But never quite revealing the truth about for whom he was protecting itЧand from what. . . .
Cnapter 1
.L/awn in Niau was probably
no different in its more basic aspects from the same time of day in any other city-state all across the world. A bit cold, a bit damp if it had managed to rain in the night, the brightening sky clear or dull as the weather dictated. This morning was pleasantly cool and fresh under a blue sky, the coolness and the freshness both legacies of a small, noisy, desert-born thunderstorm that had rattled shutters and shingles about the third hour. The quick, fierce downpouring of rain had left the air smelling sweet, clean, and for the moment dust-free, though that would change as the sun and the heat rose and the wind that always whispered in across the Eastern Desert carried the lightest motes of that desert in its wake. Its citizensЧexcept for the fortunate few who had no need of such early risingЧwould stir from their pallets with pleasure or reluctance, yawn, stretch, eat something, and then be about whatever business concerned them. Except for those mrem employed by the secret police, because their business was concerned exclusively with that of other people. . . .
"Quiet night, sir." If Reswen had heard that once since he entered Constables' House, he had heard it twenty times. Not that he would have preferred more action. Far from it. That sort of attitude came in with new recruits and left them rather precipitately after their first eightday on duty. By the time they reached his side of the chiefs desk, those few that did, they had seen enough action in one form or another to keep them content with peace for the rest of their active lives.
Reswen acknowledged the salutes of his two personal
2 Guardians of The Three
guards with a neat little flourish of his baton-of-officeЧa gesture unashamedly stolen from one of the players in a favorite dance-dramaЧand stalked up the curved flight of stairs that led to his office and his private duty-chamber. And to the file of observation reports which, regardless of whether the night had been quiet or busy, invariably spread themselves all across his desk.
Today was no different. Reswen mewed softly, an inarticulate sound of pure disgust, as he closed the door behind himself and took first note of the piled-up documentation. Chief of Constables he might be, paid in gold where lesser mrem might see no more than silver, honored, respected, and invited to all the best parties. But the clandestine duty that accompanied the post, command of the secret police, always seemed to need not the brain that was renowned for its cunning, its wit, and its mordant humor all across Niau, but a plodding, methodical mind like that of the most menial file clerk.
Reswen had been a file clerk once, long ago, He had been most things, since that morning outside the walls. He had indeed started on the walls, as a mere spear-carrier. At the time he had wondered what people back in Cragsclaw would think of itЧthe leader of small armies, now himself doing sentry-go, watch on and watch off, turn and about, and taking the same pay as any of the other guards. But what people back in his old haunts would have thought wasn't the issue, doing his job well was. He paid no attention to the gibes of some of the younger guards, that someone his age should be dozing by the fire, or setting up in a shopkeeping job somewhere. It was a gibe, of course; he had barely five years on any of them. But those who chose to try to push the battered-looking mrem around a little, just for fun, shortly found out that fun was not part of what happened. Ears torn to rags wereЧfor Reswen, unwilling to start an incident with one of these infants, batted them around like the half-wet kits they were and left them stunned, scarred, and mortified, but nothing worse.
And word got around, as he had intended it to; mention was made to one superior by another, mention of this scarred guard-mrem with the patient temper and the quick
Keeper of the City 3