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

They left their places in the open tavern fronts and drifted toward him across the square. Gobaris scratched the big hard ball of his belly, and sniffed at the wild air. "Winter rains are holding off," he judged. "They're late this year."

"Odd," the commander said. "The clouds have been piling up on the sea horizon, day after day."

Obliquely, it crossed Sun Wolf's mind that the woman Sheera had spoken of having someone on board her ship who could command the weather. A wizard? he wondered. Impossible. Then his men were around him, grinning, and he raised his thumbs in a signal of success. There were ironic cheers, laughter, and bantering chaff, and Sheera slipped from the Wolf's mind as Gobaris said, "Well, that's over, and a better job of butchery on a more deserving group of men I've never seen. Come on, Commander," he added, jabbing his morose colleague in the ribs with an elbow. "Is there anyplace in this town a man can get some wine to wash out the taste of them?"

They ended up making a circuit of the square, Sun Wolf, Gobaris, and Commander Breg, with all of Sun Wolf's bodyguard and as many of the Outland Levies as had remained in

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the town. Amid joking, laughter, and horseplay with the girls of the local sisterhood who had turned out in their tawdry finery, Sun Wolf managed to get a good deal of information about Kedwyr and its allies from Commander Breg and a general picture of the latest state of Peninsula politics.

A cool, little hand slid over his shoulder, and a girl joined them on the bench where he sat, her eyes teasing with professional promise. Remarkable eyes, he thought; deep gold, like peach brandy, lighting up a face that was young and exquisitely beautiful. Her hair was the soft, fallow gold of a ripe apricot, escaping its artful pins and lying over slim, bare shoulders in a shining mane. He thought, momentarily, of Fawn, back at the campЧthis girl couldn't be much older than eighteen years.

The tastes of wine and victory were mingled in his mouth. He said to the men he'd brought with him, "I'll be back." With their good-natured ribaldry shouting in his ears, he rose and followed the girl down an alley to her rose-scented room.

It was later than he had anticipated when he returned to the square. A white sickle moon had cleared the overhanging housetops that closed in the alley; it glittered sharply on the messy water that trickled down the gutter in the center of the street. The noise from the square had entirely faded, music and laughter dying away into four-bit love and finally sleep. His men, Sun Wolf thought to himself with a wry grin, weren't going to be pleased at having waited so long, and he steeled himself for the inevitable comments.

The square was empty.

One glance told him that all the taverns were shut, a circumstance that bunch of rowdy bastards would never have permitted if they'd still been around. Dropping back into the sheltering shadows of the alley, he scanned the empty pavement againЧmilky where the moon struck it, barred with the angular black frieze of the shadows cast by the roof of the Town Hall. Every window of that great building and of all the buildings round about was dark.

Had the President had them arrested?

Unlikely. The candlelighted room to which the girl had led him wasn't that far from the square; if there'd been an arrest, there would have been a fight, and the noise would have come to him.

Besides, if the Council had given orders for his arrest, they'd

22 Barbara Hambly

have followed him and taken him in the twisting mazes of alleys, away from his men.

A town crier's distant voice announced that it was the second watch of the night and all was well.

Much later than he'd anticipated, he thought and cursed the girl's teasing laughter that had drawn him back to her. But no matter how late he was, his men would never have gone off without him unless so ordered, even if they'd had to wait until sunup.

After a moment's thought, he doubled back toward the harbor gates. It xwas half in his mind to return to the Town Hall and make a private investigation of the cells that would invariably be underneath it. But as much as his first instinct pulled him toward a direct rescue, long experience with the politics of war told him it would be foolish. If the men had merely been arrested for drunken rowdinessЧwhich the Wolf did not believe for a momentЧthey were in no danger. If they were in danger, it meant they'd been gathered in for some other reason, and the Wolf stood a far better chance of helping them by slipping out of the city himself and getting back to his position of strength in the camp. If he did not return, it would be morning before Starhawk acted and possibly too late for any of them.

His soft boots made no noise on the cobbles of the streets. In the dark mazes of the poor quarter, there was little soundЧ no hint of pursuit or of anything else. A late-walking water seller's mournful call drifted through the blackness. From a grimy thieves' tavern, built half into a cellar, smoky and me-phitic light seeped, and with it came raucous laughter and the high-pitched, shrieking voices of whores. Elsewhere, the bells of the local ConventЧKedwyr had always been a stronghold of the Mother's followersЧchimed plaintively for midnight rites.

The harbor gate was a squat, round tower, crouching like a monstrous frog against the starry backdrop of velvet sky. Slipping out that way would mean an extra mile or so of walking, scrambling up the precarious cliff road, but the Wolf assumed that, if the President had men watching for him, they'd be watching by the main land gates.

Certainly there were none awaiting him here. A couple of men and a stocky, plain-looking woman in the uniforms of the City Guards were playing cards in the little turret room beside the closed gates, a bottle of cheap wine on the table between

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them. Sun Wolf slid cautiously through the shadows toward the heavily barred and awkwardly placed postern door that was cut in the bigger gatesЧa feature of many city gates, and one that he habitually spied out in any city he visited.