"Raymond E. Feist - Riftwar Legends - Honoured Enemy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feist Raymond E)

burden of sorrow.'
'Sorrow? How do you know what I feel?'
'I know,' Gregory announced softly. 'I saw what happened too. Jurgen made his choice, he left
himself open in order to save the boy. I would have done it, so would you.'
'I don't think so.'
'You and your Marauders have become hard men over the years, Dennis, but not soulless ones. You
would have tried to save him, even at the cost of your own life, as Jurgen did. The lad has
promise. You might not have noticed, and I'm not even sure he remembers it, but he did kill the
first Tsurani that closed on him. The one that almost got him came up from behind.'
'Nevertheless, the boy goes.'
'It'll kill him. We both know the type. Next battle he'll do something stupid to regain his honour
and die doing it.'
'That's his problem, not mine.'
'And what if he gets a half-dozen others killed as well? What would Jurgen say of that?'
'Jurgen is dead, damn you,' Dennis hissed. 'Never speak to me of him again.'
Gregory stepped back, raised his hands, then shook his head sadly, and walked over to the grave.
Looking down at the rich brown earth being covered by the falling snow, he whispered, 'Until we
stand together again in the light.'
Then he went to join the company. Tinuva fell in by his side and the two of them headed up the
trail in the opposite direction, double-checking to make sure that nothing was following the unit.
Dennis was left alone as the last of his men abandoned the clearing.
The heavy flakes swirled down, striking his face, melting into icy rivulets that dripped off a
golden beard which was beginning to show the first greys of middle age.
When all were gone, and he knew no one was watching he walked up to the grave, reached down and
picked up a clump of frozen earth.


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'Damn you,' he sighed, 'why did you leave me like this, Jurgen?'
Now there was no one left. Nothing but a flood of memories.
The holdings of the Hartrafts were not much to boast about; forest lands lying between Tyr-Sog and
Yabon. A scattering of frontier villages on the border marches, a rural squire's estates that the
high-blood earls, barons, and dukes of the south and of the east would have scoffed at, or tossed
aside as a trifle in a game of dice. But it had been his home, the home of his father and his
father's father.
Jurgen had been a young soldier for Dennis's grandfather, old Angus Hartraft, called 'Forkbeard',
who had first been granted the lands on the border for his stalwart service against the dark
things that lived to the north. Jurgen had also been his father's closest friend. And when his
father died on the first day of the Riftwar, when the Tsurani flooded into their lands, it was
Jurgen who had saved his life the night their keep was taken.
Dennis stared at the grave.
Better I had died that night, he thought, and there was a flash of resentment for old Jurgen.
Malena, his bride of barely six hours, died that night. His father had ordered him to take her
through the secret passage out of the burning chaos of the estate's central keep. He had fought
his own desire to stay with his father and had taken Malena through the tunnel. Then outside the
escape tunnel, just as freedom had been in reach, a crossbow bolt had stilled her heart forever.
He had briefly glimpsed the assassin in the flickering light from the burning keep, and the image
of the man as he turned and fled burned in Dennis's memory. Jurgen had found him kneeling in the