"Robin Hobb - Assassin 1 - Assassin' s Apprentice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

going. "Here's the bastid. Stiff-as-a-stick Chivalry's by blow. Looks a fair bit
like him, don't you say? Who's your mother, boy?"
To their credit, most of the passing people continued to come and go, with no
more than a curious stare at the six-year-old sitting by the wall. But the cask
man's question was evidently of great interest, for more than a few heads
turned, and-several tradesmen who had just exited from the kitchen drew nearer
to hear the answer.
But I did not have an answer. Mother had been Mother, and whatever I had
known of her was already fading. So I made no reply, but only stared up at him.
"Hey. What's your name then, boy?" And turning to his audience, he confided,
"I heard he ain't got no name. No highflown royal name to shape him, nor even a
cottage name to scold him by. That right, boy? You got a name?"
The group of onlookers was growing. A few showed pity in their eyes, but none
interfered. Some of what I was feeling passed to Nosy, who dropped over onto his



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side and showed his belly in supplication while thumping his tail in that
ancient canine signal that always means, "I'm only a puppy. I cannot defend
myself. Have mercy." Had they been dogs, they would have sniffed me over and
then drawn back. But humans have no such inbred courtesies. So when I didn't
answer, the man drew a step nearer and repeated, "You got a name, boy?"
I stood slowly, and the wall that had been warm against my back a moment ago
was now a chill barrier to retreat. At my feet, Nosy squirmed in the dust on his
back and let out a pleading whine. "No," I said softly, and when the man made as
if to lean closer to hear my words, "NO!" I shouted, and repelled at him, while
crabbing sideways along the wall. I saw him stagger a step backward, losing his
grip on his cask, so that it fell to the cobbled path and cracked open. No one
in the crowd could have understood what had happened. I certainly didn't. For
the most part, folk laughed to see a grown man cower back from a child. In that
moment my reputation for both temper and spirit was made, for before nightfall
the tale of the bastard standing up to. his tormentor was all over the town.
Nosy scrabbled to his feet and fled with me. I had one glimpse of Cob's face,
taut with confusion as he emerged from the kitchen, pies in hands, and saw Nosy
and I flee. Had he been Burrich, I probably would have halted and trusted my
safety to him. But he was not, and so I ran, letting Nosy take the lead.
We fled through the trooping servants, just one more small boy and his dog
racing about in the courtyard, and Nosy took me to what he obviously regarded as
the safest place in the world. Far from the kitchen and the inner keep was a
hollow Vixen had scraped out under a corner of a rickety outbuilding where sacks
of peas and beans were stored. Here Nosy had been whelped, in total defiance of
Burrich, and here she had managed to keep her pups hidden for almost three days.
Burrich himself had found her there. His smell was the first human smell Nosy
could recall. It was a tight squeeze to get under the building, but once within,
the den was warm and dry and semidark. Nosy huddled close to me and I put my arm
around him. Hidden there, our hearts soon eased down from their wild thumpings,
and from calmness we passed into the deep dreamless sleep reserved for warm