"Kay, Guy Gavriel - Last Light Of The Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

wiser. Could even join the morning search for the horse, if fat
Kjellson let him off wood-splitting to go.

They'd find the grey, bring it back, strangle and burn it on the
drifting longship with Halldr Thinshank and whichever girl had won
her spirit a place among warriors and gods by drawing the straw
that freed her from the slow misery of her life.

Bern guided the horse across a stream. The grey was big, restive,
but knew him. Kjellson had been properly grateful to the governor
when half of Red Thorkell's farm and house were settled on him,
and he had assigned his servants to labour for Thinshank at regular
times. Bern was one of those servants now, by the same
judgement that had given his family's lands to Kjellson. He had
groomed the grey stallion often, walked him, cleaned out his straw.
A magnificent horse, better than Halldr had ever deserved. There
was nowhere to run this horse properly on Rabady; he was purely
for display, an affirmation of wealth. Another reason, probably, why
the thought of taking it away had come to him tonight in the
dangerous space between dream and the waking world.

He rode on in the chill night. Winter was over, but it still had Its hard
fingers in the earth. Their lives were defined by it here in the north.
Bern was cold, even with the vest.

At least he knew where he was going now; that much seemed to
have come to him. The land his father had bought with looted gold
(mostly from the celebrated raid in Ferrieres twenty-five years ago)
was on the other side of the village, south and west. He was aiming
for the northern fringes of the trees.

He saw the shape of the marker boulder and guided the horse past
it. They'd killed and buried a girl there to bless the fields, so long
ago the inscription on the marker had faded away. It hadn't done
much good. The land near the forest was too stony to be properly
tilled. Ploughs broke up behind oxen or horses, metal rending,
snapping off. Hard, ungiving soil. Sometimes the harvests were
adequate, but most of the food that fed Rabady came from the
mainland.

The boulder cast a shadow. He looked up, saw the blue moon had
risen from beyond the woods. Spirits' moon. It occurred to him,
rather too late, that the ghost of Halldr Thinshank could not be
unaware of what was happening to his horse. Halldr's lingering soul
would be set free only with the ship-burial and burning tomorrow.
Tonight it could be abroad in the darkЧwhich was where Bern was.

He made the hammer sign, invoking both Ingavin and Th№nir. He
shivered again. A stubborn man he was. Too clever for his own
good? His father's son in that? He'd deny it, at a blade's end. This