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

He knew what was going to happen. In the dark of his mind he knew. Some one of his ancestors, under circumstances Tir could not imagine, had seen this done.
Bektis walked over to the head of the tub and stood beneath the hanging swags of iron and crystal net. He closed his eyes. Tir saw Hethya look away.
He was glad it all happened in the tub, where he didn't have to look. He was glad Ugal was gagged, and drugged, too, though the young man did make noises through it, stifled screams and worse sounds, body sounds: squirtings and gushings; horrible, sodden, elastic pops, like leather exploding under pressure, and blood spraying up.
Once Ugal's head bounced up over the rim of the tub and Tir had to clap his hands over his mouth, press his eyes shut, swallow back the bile that came dribbling then out his nose.
I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this, and he clung desperately to consciousness, unable to breathe, his mind screaming. I have to do this.
Ingold had to know.
But he couldn't look, while footfalls creaked-Bektis' or Hethya's, and there was a soft noise of squishing, and the plop of something dripping where it had been spattered up onto the canopy. All he could remember was the taste of dates, carried and treasured with a young man's cravings for sweets, all the way up from the devastated South.
Then there was another sound, a muted, deadly whickering, like fire but thinner; an aura of power that raised the hair on Tir's head. He bit down on his own sleeve, sinking his teeth into the dirty-tasting leather to keep from fainting, screaming, crying.
In front of him he saw Hethya hand Shakas Kar something-the iron gag. Shakas Kar wiped it down with a rag. From the vat Tir heard the sounds of movement, thrashing, and saw the wagon-bed rock.
Don't scream, he told himself. Whatever you do, don't scream.
A man's voice cried out random strings of sounds. An identical voice answered, "Atuthes! Atuthes!"
Tir recognized the ha'al word for father. Something bleated, like a sheep with human vocal chords.
Vair climbed the plank steps, swinging his whip a little in his gloved left hand. "Perfect," he whispered, looking down into the vat. "Perfect."
Tir watched-Tir made himself watch-while the tethyn all came down from the vat. This part wasn't bad, except that they all had Ugal's face, they all had Ugal's body, though without the scars.
Like the Akulae they were hairless, and their skin looked funny, though in the lamplight it was hard to tell what was just tricks of shadow and moisture: patchy, smooth in places and rough in others.
There were eleven of them.
Nargois brought clothing out of the bales along the walls and gave it to them, but they only stood there staring at it stupidly, and he had to show them how to dress.
This troubled the second in command. He passed a hand before the face of one Ugal and addressed him. The man answered with a faint, bleating grunt.
"It doesn't matter," said Vair shortly. "They'll fight. That's all that matters. Ugal!" he said, in a voice of command, and they all turned their heads at once, in a single movement.
"It is good," he said to Bektis. "It is good."
The men filed out when they were dressed, lumbering and shuffling in heavy coats, in wrapped rawhide leggings, Nargois nudging them along like a skinny black pale-eyed sheepdog.
Eleven, thought Tir. There had never been more than four of any group of tethyn. He remembered-out of where he didn't know-that four was all you could get, sometimes only three. Eleven was bad.
When Nargois brought in another young man-when Vair said in that warm, friendly, fatherly voice, "Hastroaal isn't it?" and Hastroaal replied eagerly, "Yes, my Lord"-Tir worked his way, with infinite slowness, back through the curtains, out into the darkness under the wagon, and so through the petticoat around the wagon's bed and out to the outer blackness.
"You understand the help I need from you? The greatness of the task I'm asking you to do?"
"You know I'd follow you to the ends of time, my Lord..."
"Good man. Good man..."
Tir relieved himself away from the wagons-his bowels were liquid with disgust and fright-and then climbed back into his own wagon, snaking through the provisions to return to his nest of furs. His hands trembled so badly he could barely take off his mittens and coat, and he felt cold through to the marrow.
The cold stayed with him, even under his blankets, growing deeper and deeper so that Tir wondered if he were dying. He tried to stay awake because he knew that when he went to sleep he'd remember fully, remember when he or that other boy had actually seen the whole thing, actually seen what happened in the iron vat (which was called a draik, he remembered, and wanted to scream at them, Stop telling me these things!).
He woke up screaming, being shaken by a guard, an older man named Mongret, to whom he clung, sobbing, feeling as if his body would tear itself apart.
"Is all right, Keshnithar," the man soothed him, calling him by the name some of the guards used when Vair wasn't there to hear: Keshnithar, Little King, though sometimes in good-natured jest they called him Drazha, Scarface. "Is all right. Oniox," he called out to another man who had come by, "get the lady, would you? Our boy's had a nightmare."
The other guard glanced back at the black tent and grunted. "Small blame to him. The very air's evil tonight. She's over there."
"Oh." There was silence, the men looking at each other through the thrown-back curtain at the back of the wagon. "Ah. Well." Mongret hugged Tir again, reassuring, but Tir knew that nobody was going to get Hethya.
He wasn't even sure if he wanted to see her, for her clothing would smell of carrion and power and lightning, and he didn't know if he could stand that. "Is just dreams, Little King," he added, in broken Wathe. "You all right?"
Tir sniffled, fighting hard not to seem a coward, and said, "I'll be all right," in the ha'al, which made both men smile.
"That's my little soldier." The men liked him, though none of them would stand up to Vair for him. He didn't blame them for this. Neither commented on the fact that his hands weren't tied. "You want me stay a little, till you sleep?"
Tir nodded. The man didn't speak the Wathe well enough to learn anything if he talked in his sleep. Mongret dried his tears with a rough, mittened hand, and Tir lay down, though he didn't sleep.
There was an odd comfort in knowing that whichever of his ancestors it was who had, willing or unwilling, witnessed what he had witnessed-who had seen the skin peel back, the organs burst, the head swell and pop like an overripe grape-had been as sickened, as appalled, as terrified as he; had wished, like him, that he had never seen it. It was as awful for a grown man as it was for a little boy.
It was almost daylight when Heytha returned to the wagon, took off her heavy outer garments, and curled up in her blankets. She smelled of the cheap southern rum from the keg in the back of the food wagon, which they sometimes distributed when the nights were very cold.
Tir listened to her breathing. He didn't think she slept. Later on in the morning, when they were breaking camp, Tir saw that the camp was crowded with tethyn, over a hundred of them, and all with those strangely patched-looking skins, all with the same few faces: Tuuves, Hastroaal, Ti Men... Their eyes were blank, not like the eyes of the Akulae or of the tethyn who'd formed the train from Bison Knoll.
Those had been slow and stupid but human. Though some of these could speak, others only grunted or made soft noises in their throats. When Tir encountered Ugal, wearing makeshift clothing and rawhide wrapped around his feet instead of boots, he had to run away behind one of the wagons and vomit.
He was still kneeling there, soaked with sweat and shaking, when Hethya found him and told him that she had to take him to Vair. It was time the train moved on, out onto the ice itself.



?Chapter 12

With dawn they brought the Dark Lightning up to the ice face and began to carve.
"Behold their road." The Icefalcon wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. He had already seen how clouds hung over the ice cap, columns of gray and black and dazzling white where the sun struck them. Up on the ice it would be world-winter indeed.
"It is bad hunting." Loses His Way passed him one of the doublesewn coats of bison-hide and a short-handled war ax. "Never have I seen so bad a hunt. See how the lady holds close to the boy? She fears for him." From a distance he'd become very taken with Hethya.
"She fears for herself. He is in her charge."