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

they centered around a hard core that had been with him for years. As far as Starhawk knew, Sun
Wolf was the only mercenary captain who operated a regular school of combat in the winter months.
The school itself was renowned throughout the West and the North for the excellence of its
fighters. Every winter, when the rains made war impossible, young men and occasional young women
made the perilous journey through the northern wastelands that had once been the agricultural
heart of the old Empire of Gwenth to the ruined and isolated little town of Wyrnde, there to ask
to be taught the hard arts of war.

There were always wars to fight somewhere. Since the moribund Empire of Gwenth had finally been
riven apart by the conflict between the Three Gods and the One, there had always been warsтАФover
the small bits of good land among the immense tracts of bad, over the trade with the East in silk
and amber and spices, over religion, or over nothing. Starhawk, whose early training had given her
a taste for such things, had once explained the theology behind the Schism to the Wolf. Being a
barbarian from the far north, he worshipped the spirits

4 Barbara Hambly

of his ancestors and would cheerfully take money from proponents of either faith. An understanding
of the situation had only amused him, as she knew it would. Lately the wars had been over the
rising of the Wizard King Altiokis, who was expanding his own empire from the dark Citadel of
Grimscarp, engulfing the Thanes who ruled the countryside and such cities as Mandrigyn.

"Will you see this woman from Mandrigyn?" she asked.

"Probably." The noise of the fight outside peaked in a crazy climax of yelling, punctuated by the
heavy crack of the whips of the Kedwyr military police. It was the fourth fight they'd heard since
returning to the camp after the sacking of the town was done; victory was headier than any booze
ever brewed.

Starhawk collected her gearтАФsword, dagger, mail shirtтАФ preparatory to returning to her own tent.
Melplith stood on high ground, above its sheltered bayтАФone of those arid regions whose chief crops
of citrus and olives had naturally turned its inhabitants to trade for their living. Chill winds
now blew up from the choppy waters of the bay, making the lampflame flicker in its topaz glass and
chilling her flesh through the damp cotton of her dark, embroidered shirt.


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"You think it's a job?"

"I think she'll offer me one."

"Will you take it?"

The Wolf glanced over at her briefly. His eyes, in this light, were pale gold, tike the wines of
the Middle Kingdoms, He was close to forty, and his tawny hair was thinning, but there was no gray
either in it or in the ragged mustache that drooped like a clump of yellow-brown winter weeds from
the underside of a craggy and much-bent nose. The power and thickness of his chest and shoulders