"Mercedes Lackey - Bardic Voices 02 - Robin & the Kestrel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

CHAPTER ONE
Jonny Brede тАФ aka "Free Bard Kestrel" тАФ shook mud and cold, cold water out of his eyes. He
grunted as he heaved another shovelful of soft mud from beneath the wheel of their foundered
travel-wagon. And the hole immediately filled up with water. This wasnot how a honeymoon was
supposed to be conducted. Not in a blinding downpour, with more mud on him than even this flood of
rain could wash away. Not with their wagon stuck in a pothole the size of Birnam. What happened to
"and they lived happily ever after"?
 It's stuck at the end of tales in stupid Guild ballads, that's what happened to it. Real people get
stuck in potholes, not platitudes.

Jonny Brede grinned at that, in spite of the miserable situation; it had a good ring to it. A nice turn of
phrase. He'd have to tell Robin; she could store it away in her capacious memory and put it in a song
some time. She was the one with a talent for lyrics, not he. They hadn't been out of Birnam for more than
a week when she'd already crafted a song about the two of them, "The Gypsy Prince." "If I don't,
someone else will," she reasoned, "and if it isn't Rune or Talaysen, they'll probably get it all wrong. Never
trust your story to someone else."

Well, she had a point. Though he simply could not think of himself as "Sional," much less as "Prince
Sional" тАФ not anymore.

Not when the "Prince" was in command of no more than himself, two mares, and a shovel. Better
"Jonny," or better yet, "Free Bard Kestrel."

He shoveled a little more muddy gravel under the wheel of their caravan-wagon and took a cautious
peek at his bride of a few scant weeks through a curtain of rain. The last time he'd looked at her, she'd
been giving the wagon a glare as black as the thunderclouds overhead. She'd been standing to one side
of their patient, sturdy, ebony mares, fists on her hips, gaudy clothing pasted to her body by the rain, with
her ebony hair flattened down on her head and her lips moving silently. He did not think she was praying.
The look on her face had boded ill for the King's road crew, if she ever discovered who had permitted
this enormous pothole to form and fill with soft, sucking mud.

Her temper did not seem to have improved in the past few moments. She held the bridles of their two
well-muscled horses and murmured encouraging things into their ears, but the scowl on her face belied
her soft words. Hopefully her temper would cool before she actually needed to find a target for her anger
other than the storm itself. Robin had a formidable temper when it was aroused.

Kestrel sighed, and stamped down on the gravel to make it sink into the mud and hopefully pack down.
He was happy, despite being soaked to the skin, cold and muddy. Their horses had shied at a lightning
strike, running off onto the verge of the road and now their wagon was mired at the side of the road. So
what? It was not an insurmountable problem. The wagon had not been hit, their horses had not broken
legs, neither ofthem were hurt. It was just a matter of hauling the thing out themselves, or waiting until
someone came along who could help them.

So what?He wasn't going to let a little accidentupset his cheerful mood. In fact, he thought he had never
been so happy before in all his life. Certainly not during his best-forgotten childhood.

He shoveled in another load of gravel, which splashed into the yellow mud and sank.Prince Sional,