"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 4 - Mother Of Winter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

beasts for slaughter up here to the Keep every year, we're entitled to something for
our sweat."
"Something more than us risking our necks to patrol your perimeter, you mean?"
Janus asked thinly, and Graw scoffed.
"My men can do their own patrolling! What the hell good is it to know about saber-
teeth or some bunch of scroungy dooic ten miles from the nearest fields?" He
conveniently neglected to mention the warning the Guards had brought him of the
White Raiders last winter, or the battle they and the small force of nobles and men-at-
arms had fought with a bandit company the autumn before. "But if our labor and our
strength are going out to support a bunch of people up here at the Keep who do
nothing or next to nothing . . ." His glance slid back to Rudy, and from him to Alde's
belly, rounded under the green wool of her faded gown.
The Lady of the Keep met his eye. "Are you saying then that the Settlements Council
has voted to dispense with sending foodstuffs to the Keep in return for patrols by the
Guards and advice from the mages who live here?"
"Dammit, we haven't voted on anything!" snapped Graw, who, as far as Rudy knew,
wasn't even on the Settlements Council. "But as a man of the land whose labor is
supporting you, I have the right to know what's being done! Not one of your wizards
has come down to have a look at my fields."
"The slunch is different down there?"
"Thank you very much for coming to us, Master Graw." Minalde's voice warmed as
she inclined her head. As Graw made a move to stride toward the Keep, she added,
with impeccably artless timing, "And I bid you welcome to the Keep, you and your
riders, and make you free of it."
He halted, his jaw tightening, but he could do no more than mutter, "I thank you, lady.
Majesty," he added, under the cool pressure of that morning-glory gaze. He glared at
Rudy, then jerked his hand at the small band of riders who'd accompanied the herd of
tribute sheep up the pass. They fell in behind him, bowing awkward thanks to Alde as
they followed him up the shallow black stone steps and vanished into the dark tunnel
of the Doors.
Rudy set his jaw, willing the man's hostility to slide off him like rain.
In a sweet voice trained by a childhood spent with relentless deportment masters,
Minalde said, "One of these days I'm going to break that man's nose."
"Y' want lessons?" Janus asked promptly, and they all laughed.
"Why is it," Minalde asked with a sigh, later, as she and Rudy walked down the
muddy path toward the Keep farms, "that one always hears of spells that will turn
people into trees and frogs and mongrel dogs, but never one that will turn a ... a lout
like that into a good man?"
Rudy shrugged. "Maybe because if I said, 'Abracadabra, turn that jerk into a good
man,' there'd be no change." He shook his head. "Sheesh. I've been around Ingold too
long."
She laughed and touched his hand. His fingers fitted with hers as if designed to do so
at the beginning of time. The farms-which, contrary to Graw's assertions, were in fact
the chief business of the Keep, and always had been-were far enough from the walls
that wizard and lady could walk handfast without exacerbating the sensibilities of the
conservative.
Everyone knew that the Keep wizard's pupil was the lady's lover and the father of the
child she carried, but it was a matter seldom mentioned; the religious teachings of a
less desperate age died hard.
"You're going to have to go down there, you know," Alde said in time.