"Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf 1 - The Ladies Of Mandrigyn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

because he made it his policy never to get involved in local politics, and his men because of a
blood-chilling directive from their captain on the subject. The noises of drunken murder did not
concern himтАФ there wasn't a man in his troop who would have so much as stayed to watch.

"Mandrigyn," Starhawk said thoughtfully. "Altiokis conquered that city last spring, didn't he?"

Sun Wolf nodded and settled himself into a fantastic camp chair made of staghom bound with gold,
looted from some tribal king in the far northeast. Most of the big tent's furnishings had been
plundered from somewhere or other. The peacock hangings that separated it into two rooms had once
adorned the bedroom of a prince of the K'Chin Desert. The cups of translucent, jade-green lacquer
and gold had belonged to a merchant on the Bight Coast. The graceful ebony table, its delicate
inlays almost hidden under the bloody armor that had been dumped upon it, had once graced the wine
room of a gentlemanly noble of the Middle Kingdoms, before his precious vintages had been swilled
by the invading armies of his enemies and he himself had been dispatched beyond such concerns.

"The city went fast," Sun Wolf remarked, picking up a rag and setting to work cleaning his own


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weapons. "Basically, it was the same situation as we had here in MelplithтАФfactional splits in the
parliament, scandal involving the royal familyтАФ they have a royal family there, or they did have,
anywayтАФ the city weakened by internal fighting before Altiokis marched down the pass. I'm told
there were people there who welcomed him as a liberator."

Starhawk shrugged. "No weirder than some of the things the Trinitarian heretics believe," she
joked, deadpan, and he grinned. Like most northerners, the Hawk held to the Old Faith against the
more sophisticated theologies of the Triple God.

THf LADIES OF MANDRIGYN 3

"The Wizard King's Citadel has been on Mandrigyn's back doorstep for a hundred and fifty years,"
the, Wolf continued after a moment. "Last year they signed some kind of treaty with him. ! could
see it coming even then."

Starhawk shoved her sword back into its sheath and wiped her fingers on a rag. Sun Wolf's talent
for collecting and sorting information was uncanny, but it was a skill that served him well. He
had a knack for gathering rumors, extrapolating political probabilities from crop prices and
currency fluctuations and the most trivial bits of information that made their way north to his
broken-down stronghold at the old administrative town of Wrynde. Thus he and his men had been on
the spot in the Gwarl Peninsula when the fighting had broken out between the trading rivals of
Kedwyr and Melplith. Kedwyr had hired the Wolf and his troop at an astronomical sum.

It didn't always work that wayтАФin her eight years as a mercenary in Sun Wolf's troop, Starhawk had
seen one or two spectacular pieces of mistimingтАФbut on the whole it had enabled the Wolf to
maintain his troops in better-than-average style, fighting in the summer and sitting out the
violence of the winter storms in the relative comfort of the half-ruined town of Wymde.

Like all mercenary troops. Sun Wolf's shifted from year to year in size and composition, though