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

something about Burrich did not permit me to whimper or beg quarter from him.
Instead I followed him doggedly. We reached a building and he dragged open a
heavy door.
Warmth and animal smells and a dim yellow light spilled out. A sleepy stable
boy sat up in his nest of straw, blinking like a rumpled fledgling. At a word
from Burrich he lay down again, curling up small in the straw and closing his
eyes. We moved past him, Burrich dragging the door to behind us. He took the
lantern that burned dimly by the door and led me on.
I entered a different world then, a night world where animals shifted and
breathed in stalls, where hounds lifted their heads from their crossed forepaws
to regard me with lambent eyes green or yellow in the lantern's glow. Horses
stirred as we passed their stalls. "Hawks are down at the far end," Burrich said
as we passed stall after stall. I accepted it as something he thought I should
know.
"Here," he said finally. "This'll do. For now, anyway. I'm jigged if I know
what else to do with you. If it weren't for the Lady Patience, I'd be thinking
this a fine god's jest on the master. Here, Nosy, you just move over and make
this boy a place in the straw. That's right, you cuddle up to Vixen, there.
She'll take you in, and give a good slash to any that think to bother you."
I found myself facing an ample box stall, populated with three hounds. They
had roused and lay, stick tails thumping in the straw at Burrich's voice. I
moved uncertainly in amongst them and finally lay down next to an old bitch with
a whitened muzzle and one torn ear. The older male regarded me with a certain
suspicion, but the third was a half-grown pup, and Nosy welcomed me with ear
lickings, nose nipping, and much pawing. I put an arm around him to settle him,
and then cuddled in amongst them as Burrich had advised. He threw a thick
blanket that smelled much of horse down over me. A very large gray horse in the
next stall stirred suddenly, thumping a heavy hoof against the partition, and
then hanging his head over to see what the night excitement was about. Burrich
absently calmed him with a touch.
"It's rough quarters here for all of us at this outpost. You'll find Buckkeep
a more hospitable place. But for tonight, you'll be warm here, and safe." He
stood a moment longer, looking down at us. "Horse, hound, and hawk, Chivalry.
I've minded them all for you for many a year, and minded them well. But this
by-blow of yours; well, what to do with him is beyond me."


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I knew he wasn't speaking to me. I watched him over the edge of the blanket
as he took the lantern from its hook and wandered off, muttering to himself. I
remember that first night well, the warmth of the hounds, the prickling straw,
and even the sleep that finally came as the pup cuddled close beside me. I
drifted into his mind and shared his dim dreams of an endless chase, pursuing a
quarry I never saw, but whose hot scent dragged me onward through nettle,
bramble, and scree.
And with the hound's dream, the precision of the memory wavers like the
bright colors and sharp edges of a drug dream. Certainly the days that follow
that first night have no such clarity in my mind.