"Barbara Hambly - A Night with the Girls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

A Night with the Girls
Barbara Hambly
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"What's the problem?" Starhawk of Wrynde swung down from her horse in front of Butc
infirmary tent. Though she hadn't been in a mercenary camp in almost two years, she had a
soul-deep sense of familiarity about the place, like the outhouse behind a familiar tavern: A
we back here again? Only the outhouse would have been quieter. Past the walls of Horran,
sun dipped toward the Inner Sea, red behind the squat black towers of siege engines. In fron
tents the meres sharpened swords and polished armor, repaired straps, chatted up the camp
whores, or diced. Cook-fire smoke gritted in the eyes, profanity in the ears.

Be it ever so humbleтАж

Butcher craned to look past Starhawk's shoulder. "Where's the Wolf?"

"And I'm so glad to see you, too," replied Starhawk.

The troop physician laughed, embarassed. "I'm sorry." She made a show of checking her
breeches pockets and the leathern purse at her belt. "I must have left my manners in my othe
clothes. I'm damn glad to see you, Hawk, but I meant it in my letter when I said we needed S
Wolf here."

"Sun Wolfs in the mountains, chasing down some woman who's supposed to be teaching
magic." Starhawk ran the horse's reins through the ropes that wrapped one of the barrels pi
outside the hospital tent, and pulled down her saddlebags. "Don't tell me you've got another
wizard in the city." Two years ago the troop, of which Starhawk had once been second in
command, had the misfortune to have a curse placed on it during a siege. The results had no
been pleasant for anyone.

Butcher scratched her short-cropped graying hair, and led the way into the tent. Inside, h
two apprentices were closing the flaps and lighting lamps. A slave came past with dishes o
porridge on a tray. A couple of meres from one of the smaller troops, as well as those of
Captain Ari's army, were sitting up in their cots; but nobody who looked like soldiers of the
Prince of Chare, who'd hired them. Elsewhere a man muttered in drugged pain. Here on the
Gwarl Peninsula, where the trade-routes ran from Ciselfarge and points east, there was ple
of access to opium.

"I don't think it's a wizard." The physician led the way through the aisle of cots to a
curtained-off rear corner of the tent. "But sure as pox there's something going on. Take a loo
this."
 An enormous woman rose from beside the cot as Butcher led the Hawk through the curta
Starhawk nodded a greeting.

"Battlesow here found him," explained Butcher. "They were on watch together, night be
last. They usually watched together." She brought the hanging lamp down close, and twitch
the sheet back.