"Simon R. Green - Deathstalker - 1 - Deathstalker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

the oldest Families in the Empire, he had a duty to marry someone of his own rank
and station. And he would. Eventually.

Owen looked thoughtfully at the giant holo on the wall opposite his bed, showing
the original Deathstalker in all his fearsome aspect and martial glory: Warrior
Prime of the Empire and founder of the Clan that still bore his name. He looked a
bit rough and ready in his thick furs and steelmesh tunic, bristling with weapons,
his head shaved in a mercenary's scalplock, but it didn't take too much
imagination to transform his warrior's arrogance into a lord's nobility. According
to Family history, he'd been the greatest fighting man of his day, unanimously
elected Warrior Prime and elevated to the Peerage by popular acclaim. Hard man
by all accounts, and a bit of a bastard, but the public liked that in their heroes.
Bloodied his sword on a hundred worlds, and never backed away from an insult or
a war.

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Green, Simon R. - Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker (v1.0) (html)




He was also the creator and wielder of the Darkvoid Device, which put out a
thousand suns in a moment and left their planets to sail silently through an endless
night. The Dark void. But no one talks about that anymore outside the Family.

Pity about what happened to him in the end, but that's politics for you. His son had
taken over as Warrior Prime to the Empire, and things went on as they should.
Owen wondered vaguely what the old man would have made of his most recent
descendant. Probably would have had him put down the moment he showed any
sign of intellectual tendencies. Owen couldn't bring himself to really give a damn.
He'd always known he was a writer, not a fighter. He'd had a proper training in
weaponry and all the martial arts, as befitted his station and inheritance, but it had
never interested him. His interest lay in researching and piecing together the
Empire's somewhat tangled history. Nothing excited him like reaching into the
morass of legend and myth that made up so much of the past and producing one
indisputable new fact, clear and sharp as a diamond in a coal mine. And if he'd
learned one thing from all the histories he'd read and the tales he'd investigated, it
was that most of the time there was no glory and damn all honor to be found on
the battlefield. Only blood and mud and the endless bitterness of lost hopes.

Most wars turned out to be squalid little affairs, once you dug through the lies and
propaganda, fought to protect trade interests or save political face. Owen was
damned if he'd fight and die just so someone else could look good. Particularly
when he had so much to live for. The only real legacy he had from his bad old,
mad old ancestor was the Deathstalker ring; an ugly chunky circle of black gold
handed down out of the unimaginable past, the sign and seal of Deathstalker
authority. According to the Family tradition, he was forbidden to remove it, save
to pass it on to his eldest son. They'd had to cut off his father's finger to get it after
he was dead. But then, Owen and his father had never got on.