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

Then a draft of wild smoky night breathed suddenly through the tent, and Sheera swung around as Starhawk paused in the doorway. For a moment, the women stood facing each other, the one in her dark gown sewn with shadowy opals, with her wild and perilous beauty, the other windbumed and plain as bread, her man's doublet accentuating die wide shoulders and narrow hips, the angular face with its cropped hair. Slarhawk's rolled-back sleeves showed forearms muscled like a man's, all crimped with pink war scars.

They sized each other up in silence. Then Sheera thrust past Starhawk, through the tent flap, to vanish into the blood-scented night.

The Hawk looked after her in silence for a moment, then turned back to her chief, who still sat in his camp chair, his hands folded before him and his fox-yellow eyes brooding. He sighed, and the tension seemed to ebb from his muscles as much as it ever did on campaign. The door curtain moved again, and Fawn entered, her dark hair fretted to tangles, falling in a soft web over her slender back.

. Sun Wolf stood up and shook his head in answer to his lieutentant's unasked question. "May the spirits of his ancestors," he said quietly, "help the poor bastard who falls afoul of her."

CHAPTER

'UNLJGHT LAY UKE A THICK AMBER RESIN ON THE SURFACE

of the council table, catching in a burning line on the brass of its inlay work, like the glare at the edge of the sea. For all the twinge of autumn that spiced the air outside, it was over-warm up here, and the Council of Kedwyr, laced firmly into their sober coats of padded and reinforced black wool, were sweating gently in the magnified sunlight that fell through the great oriel windows. Sun Wolf sat at the foot of the table between the Captain of the Outland Levies and the Commander of the City Guards, his hands folded, the glaring sun catching like spurts of fire on the brass buckles of his doublet, and waited for the President of the Council to try and wriggle out of his contract.

Both the Outland Captain Gobaris and the City Commander Breg had warned him. They themselves fought for Kedwyr largely as a duty fixed by tradition, and their pay was notoriously elastic.

The President of the Council opened the proceedings with a well-rehearsed paean of praise for the Wolf's services, touching briefly upon his regrets at having had to go to war against such a small neighbor as Melplith at all. He went on to speak of the hardships they had all endured, and Sun Wolf, scanning those pink, sweaty faces and hamlike jowls bulging out over the high-wrapped white neckclothes, remembered the rotten rations and wondered how much these men had made off them. The President, a tall, handsome man with the air of a middle-aged athlete run to fat, came to his conclusion, turned to the ferret-faced clerk at his side, and said, "Now, as to the matter

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THг LADIES OF

of payment. I believe the sum promised to Captain Sun Wolf was thirty-five hundred gold pieces or its equivalent?"

The man nodded in agreement, glancing down at the unrolled parchment of the contract that he held in his little white hand.

"In the currency of the Realm of Kedwyr..." the President began, and Sun Wolf interrupted him, his deep rumbling voice deceptively lazy.

"The word 'equivalent' isn't in my copy of the contract."

He reached into the pouch on his belt and pulled out a much-folded wad of parchment. As he deliberately spread it out on the surface of the table before him, he could see the uneasy glance that passed among the councilmen. They had not thought that he could read.

The President's wide smile widened. "Well, of course, it is understood thatЧ"

"I didn't understand it," Sun Wolf said, still in that mild tone of voice. "If I had meant 'gold or local,' I'd have specified it. The contract says 'gold'Чand by international contractual law, gold is defined by assay weight, not coinage count."

in the appalled silence that followed. Captain Gobaris of the Outland Levies leaned his chin on his palm in such a way that his fingers concealed the grin that was struggling over his round, heavy face.

The President gave his famous, glittering smile. "It's a pleasure to deal with a man of education, Captain Sun Wolf," he said, looking as if he would derive even greater pleasure from seeing Sun Wolf on board a ship that was headed straight for the rocks that fringed Kedwyr's cliffs. "But as a man of education, you must realize that, because of the disrupted conditions on the Peninsula, assay-weight gold coinage is in critically short supply. The balance of imports and exports must be reestablished before our stockpiles of gold are sufficient to meet your demands."

"My demands," Sun Wolf reminded him gently, "were made six months ago, before the trade was disrupted."

"Indeed they were, and you may be sure that under ordinary circumstances our treasuries would have been more than sufficient to give you your rightful dues in absolute-weight cohv age. But emergency contingencies arose which there was no way to foresee. The warehouse fires on the silk wharves and the failure of the lemon crops on which so much of our export

18 Barbara Hambty

depends caused shortages in the treasury which had to be covered from funds originally earmarked for the war."

Sun Wolf glanced up. The ceiling of the council hall was newly gildedЧhe'd watched the workmen doing it, one afternoon when he'd been kept kicking his heels here for an hour and a half trying to see the President about the rations the Council members had been selling them.