"Paul Kidd - The Nobles 05 - The Council of Blades" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kidd Paul)

from days long gone. The ruins still yielded a strange harvest of old cogs and bro-ken statues; curiosities
avoided by sensible, superstitious souls.
Two hundred years before, the grand mercenary com-panies of the Vilhon Reach had turned their backs
on their honorless Chondathian employers and a worthless war. The huge divisions, with their traveling
hospitals, mobile sanctuaries and courts, had moved slowly east into an empty land of yellow hills and fallen
stone on the shores of the Akanamere.
All the sciences of the north were brought to bear upon the fallow lands; ancient aqueducts were
repaired by skilled military engineers, while soldiers cleared the bro-ken harbor mouths and roads. As years
of building passed, the soldiers' tent cities became true towns, and mercenary companies changed into tiny
nations. The great captains married camp followers, captives, and whores, breeding heirs to take over their
commands in the years yet to come.
For two busy centuries the kingdoms had prosperedтАФlocked into the traditions of their freebooting past.
Military discipline readily tucked itself under the covers of democracy. The free-voting mercenary councils
became senates of nobility, each captain still having status according to the number of his men.
The free companies soon vanished, and in their place the Blade Kingdoms had been born.
The Blade Councils that ruled the kingdoms were descended from educated men; soldiers who had risen
above mere passion, and who had brought the art of war-fare to its greatest heights. As they grew, the
kingdoms prided themselves on the triumphs of the rational mind; of law and order, sciences and art.
Men being men, disputes still arose; the Blade Kingdoms came of martial roots, and soldiers were their
political heart and soul. Yet even in war, the scientific mind could rise above brute emotion; war could be
confined to pure military contest, leaving the daily lives of simple subjects quite alone. And so each summer,
the great armies marched across the hills in dazzling, intricate campaigns, making move and countermove
like ploys played in an all-consuming game.
Thus, in the drowsy days of a golden summer, it came to pass that Sumbria and her neighbor Colletro
were once again at war. The contentionтАФas it had been in many campaign seasons pastтАФwas the
ownership of the Valley of Umbricci, its salt mines, its olive presses and its prosperous cattle farms.
Burned farms and slaughtered cattle profited no man. The armies, therefore, moved through the passes
and down into the valley without offering the inhabitants the slightest bit of harm. Provisions were bought
and sold, and local womenfolk made the firesides of both armies merry through the nights.
The campaign progressed with intricate, energetic subtlety. By day, the hippogriffs circled overhead,
their riders endlessly skirmishing and spying on the maneu-vers far below; by night, cunning
countermarches and surprise attacks were launched. Casualties mounted, though thanks to the laws of war,
they remained blessedly light. For in "white war," wounded opponents offered ran-som for their lives, and
an enemy recovering with his feet tucked up in bed was worth more gold to his captor than a corpse
moldering in the ground....
Move and countermove, feint and strikeтАФuntil finally the Prince of Sumbria and the ruler of Colletro
saw fit to venture themselves upon a final throw ...
Now, in the height of an afternoon that sparkled like warm, clear wine, the two armies spread across the
val-ley floor in all their martial splendor. Dense pike forma-tions stalked like many-legged insects in shells of
bur-nished steel; the crossbowmen and pavisiers swarmed along the flanks like butterflies, covering the
grass with the mad motley of their particolored clothes. Engineers scuttled back from their gigantic
catapults, sheltering behind wicker shields as the machines prepared to fire. The massive engines pinned the
battle lines; pikes and bill-hooks sank and locked as the soldiers rigidly dressed their formations. The valley
grew still and strangely silent, quiet but for the restless stir of banners and the rustling of arms.
Beneath gay umbrellas of whirring hippogriffs, cavalry began to move: Lanze SpezzateтАФmercenary
horsemen in half-armors made of burnished steel. To the rear, there rode the ElmetiтАФthe noble horse,
decked out in a pon-derous grandeur of golden armor and nodding plumes. The horses paraded solemnly
past the waiting ranks of infantry, hooves stepping high and horse-necks arching like haughty cobras in the
sun. The formal parade of power passed back and forth across the fields, carefully scrutinized by the
commanders of their foes.