"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 5 - Icefalcons Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

meadow grass.
This Eldor was a man of thirty-five, as tall as Alwir and just slightly taller than the Icefalcon himself, who
at seventeen was an inch or so short of his final growth. Eldor wore his brown hair cut off about his
shoulders, as was the fashion of civilized people, and had an air of lean strength. Sometimes he would
fight practice bouts with his warriors, either the black-clothed or the red.
Observing them in the light of the fires and torches-which illuminated the whole western face of the Keep
and would have made them an easy target for the arrows of any foe on earth-or in the twilight before full
dark, the Icefalcon saw with approval the hard stringency of the teaching.
The lithe bald man in charge corrected and explained and shouted criticism as if the combatants were
stupid children barely able to bat one another with clubs, or put them through endless drills with weighted
weapons that the Icefalcon quickly saw were designed to most quickly and efficiently increase their
strength and speed.
It was a method of teaching he had never encountered among his own people, and it fascinated him. He
would go down to the camp by the black walls every evening, after the work of planting and clearing had
been done and after the stupid patrols had been called in, and he would watch them for hours.
In his own camp he whittled a sword of the length they were using, with a two-handed hilt, balanced
differently from the short stabbing-swords used on the plain and made for a different sort of warfare. He
practiced everything he had seen the previous night, timing himself against the calls of the night-birds or
striking against a tree trunk.
Then he would go back and listen, and heard for the first time the music these people made, with harps
and pipes, different from the simple reed flutes of his people, intricate and beautiful if completely useless.
They would also tell tales, of valor and violence and love, and it was some time before he realized that
these were made up and had never really happened to anyone. It was an art with them, he learned
later-and also among Gil's people, evidently-to make such fictions sound as if they were true. The tales of
civilized people were beautiful and fascinated the Icefalcon in spite of himself, but he told himself they
were useless.
Then one night the Icefalcon had returned to his camp to find Wind and Little Dancer gone.
That Eldor hadn't taken all three animals, as one would do to an enemy, outraged him. I think you'll need
a horse, it implied. That he had left Brown Girl, the worst of the three, was a slap, given teasingly, as a
man might slap a boy in jest. And he knew it was Eldor who had taken them. While he was watching the
sparring in the evening, he thought, annoyed, as he searched the place the next morning for tracks.
He found them, but it was difficult. The man had covered his traces well. Eldor had distracted him with
the large search parties while making solitary reconnaissance of his own.
The Icefalcon guessed they were expecting him to try to steal back Little Dancer, at least, from the
cavvy. They always tethered her and Wind in the middle. He noticed the Guards were now more
numerous. So he waited and watched, until one evening Eldor rode forth from the Keep alone on Wind,
a tall black stallion that the Icefalcon had seen was a favorite of his. He followed him up the meadows to
the rising ground above the Keep and shot him in the back with an arrow.
The Icefalcon smiled again, thinking about it now as he made a cold camp in the ditch beside the
west-leading road.
Of course Eldor had been wearing armor, steel plate sandwiching a core of cane and overlaid with spells
of durability and deflection. If it hadn't been twilight, blue shade filling the long trough of Renweth Vale
like a lake of clear dark water, he'd have seen the awkward fit of the man's surcoat or wondered why in
summer he'd worn a cloak.
Eldor had carried a pig's bladder of blood, too, and smashed it as he fell from Wind's back, so the
Icefalcon smelled blood from where he hid in the trees. He'd thought it sheer bad luck that his victim had
fallen on the reins, holding the horse near. The "corpse" had hooked his feet out from under him and put a
knife to his throat. The Icefalcon never believed in bad luck again.
"Alwir thinks you're a scout from a bandit gang," Eldor said, without relaxing his grip. "But you're alone,
aren't you?"