"Kate Elliott - Jaran 2 - An Earthly Crown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

"I will protect you," Aleksi muttered under his breath. He loved her fiercely, as
only a brother can love a sister, the oldest bond between a man and a woman and the
most important one. She had saved his life, had taken him into her tent, had given him
the security he had not had since he was a tiny child. Perhaps her other brother, the
khaja prince who lived far to the south, loved her more: Aleksi doubted it. Perhaps
Bakhtiian loved her more, but it was pointless to measure oneself against Bakhtiian.
Bakhtiian was not like other men. He belonged, not to himself, but to the jaran, to his
people, and if his passions were greater than other men's, so, too, were his burdens
and his responsibilities.
Bakhtiian moved. He walked, lithe as any predator, across the gap between his
pillow and the semicircle of elders, and knelt in front of his aunt.
"With your permission, my aunt," he said. She did not speak, but simply placed
her palm on his hair and withdrew it again. He rose and walked to the other end of the
crescent, to kneel before the etsana of the eldest tribe, Elizaveta Sakhalin. He kept his
eyes lowered, as befitted a modest man.
The elderly woman regarded him evenly.
At last, Bakhtiian spoke.
"When Mother Sun sent her daughter to the earth, she sent with her ten sisters,
and gifted them each with a tent and a name. The eldest was Sakhalin, then Arkhanov,
Suvorin, Velinya, Raevsky, Vershinin, Grekov, Fedoseyev, and last the twins,
Veselov and Orzhekov. Each sister had ten daughters, and each daughter ten
daughters in turn, and thus the tribes of the jaran were born. This summer we begin
our ride against the khaja lands.'' Now he lifted his eyes to look directly at her, though
she was his elder, and a woman. "Of the ten elder tribes, who will come with me?''
Sakhalin rose. She was a tiny woman, well past her childbearing years, and
strength radiated from her. She examined her nephew first, then each of the other nine
etsanas and their warleaders in turn. Each man went forward and laid his saber in
front of Bakhtiian's pillow. Each woman unbound the horse-tail from her staff and
bound it, in turn, to the staff resting beside Bakhtiian's pillow. Nine sabers, ten horse-
tails. The priests' chanting droned on, a muted counterpoint. The standard atop the
tent, a plain gold banner, fluttered wildly.
"Bakhtiian," Sakhalin said, which meant He-who-has-traveled-far. "All will
come." She raised him up and released him, and he walked back to the pillow and
sank down onto it. He took the staff into his hands and held it, weighing its strength.
Then he lifted his gaze to the endless blue sky.
Sakhalin turned to survey the assembly. She stretched out her arms to the
heavens. "Mother Sun and Father Wind be our witness," she said, and though she did
not seem to raise her voice, it carried effortlessly across the plateau. "All will come."
A great shout rose, shattering the stillness.
"Ja-tar!" they cried. "To ride!"
Elizaveta Sakhalin sat down, and a hush fell.
Yaroslav Sakhalin rose, dyan of the eldest tribe, and he walked forward and took
his saber from the ground and held it out. Its blade winked in the torchlight.
"Where will you lead us?" Sakhalin asked.
Bakhtiian did not answer. His gaze had taken on a distant cast, as if he were
looking at something not there, some place, some person, some vision that only he
could see.
"Leave him," said Elizaveta Sakhalin. "We must leave him here to talk to the
gods." It took half the night for them all to negotiate the narrow trail down to the
camp below, leaving Bakhtiian alone above.