"Harry Harrison - Hammer Cross 1 - The Hammer and the Cross" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

had said and watch he would. But he didn't have to do it as dry as a
reluctant virgin. Godwin bellowed downwind to the slaves, for the hot spiced
ale he had
commanded half an hour before. Instantly one of them came running out, the
leather mug
in his hand. Godwin eyed him with deep disfavor as he trotted over to the
palisade and up
the ladder to the watchkeeper's walkway. A damned fool, this one. Godwin kept
him
because he had sharp eyes, but that was all. Merla, his name. He had been a
fisherman
once. Then there had been a hard winter, little to catch, he had fallen behind
with the dues
he owed to his landlords, the black monks of St. John's Minister at Beverley,
twenty miles
off. First he had sold his boat to pay his dues and feed his wife and bairns.
Then, when he
had no money and could not feed them any longer, he had had to sell his family
to a richer
man, and in the end had sold himself to his former landlords. And they had
lent Merla to
Godwin. Damned fool. If the slave had been a man of honor he would have sold
himself
first and given the money to his wife's kin, so at least they would have taken
her in. If he
had been a man of sense he would have sold his wife and the bairns first and
kept the boat.
Then maybe he would have had a chance to buy them back. But he was a man of
neither
sense nor honor. Godwin turned his back on the wind and the sea and took a
firm swallow
from the brimming mug. At least the slave hadn't been sipping from it. He
could learn from
a thrashing if from nothing else.
Now what was the wittol staring at? Staring past his master's shoulder, mouth
agape,
pointing out to sea.
"Ships," he yelled. "Viking ships, two mile out to sea. I see 'em again. Look,
master,
look!"
Godwin spun automatically, cursed as the hot liquid slopped over his sleeve,
peered
out into the cloud and rain along the pointing arm. Was there a dot there, out
where the
cloud met the waves? No, nothing. Or... maybe. He could see nothing steadily,
but out there
the waves would be running twenty feet high, high enough to shelter any ship
trying to ride
out a storm under bare poles.
"I see 'em," yelled Merla again. "Two ships, a cable apart."