"Mercedes Lackey - Owl Mage 1 - Owlflight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

notice that Darian was taking a very long time to fetch wood from a few yards away.
 There was no sound from inside the cottage, and Darian ambled off slowly, making as little noise
as possible until he was out of easy hearing distance. The village was fairly quiet at this time of day, with
most people working in the fields. Only a few crafters had work to keep them in their workshops at this
time of year; most of the things that people needed they had to make for themselves these days, or hope
that someone else in the village had the skills they lacked. Leather and fur were available in abundance,
but the tanner worked hides mostly in the fall, and there was no official cobbler since Old Man Makus
died. The blacksmith did all metal work needed, and with forty-odd families to provide for, he generally
had enough work to keep him busy all of the time. The miller was also the baker, keeping flour and bread
under the same roof, so to speak. He baked almost all of the bread and occasional sweets for the village,
so that only one person would have to fire up and tend an oven. Women would often put together a
stewpot or a meat pie or set of pasties for the evening dinner, and take it to him to put just inside the
oven in the morning. Then they could go out to work the fields, and fetch the cooked meal back when the
family returned for dinner. The womenfolk of ErroldтАЩs Grove did their own spinning, weaving, and
sewing, mostly during the long, dark hours of winter, which was when the men made crude shoes and
boots, mended or made new harnesses and belts, and carved wooden implements. Once every three or
four months, everyone would take a day off work to make pots, plates, storage jars, and cups of clay
from the banks of the Londell River, and in a few days when those articles were dry, the baker and the
woodcutter would fire them all at once. Those went into a common store from which folk could draw
whatever they needed until it was time to replenish the crockery again. The only things that had to be
brought in from outside were objects of metal that required more skill than the blacksmith had, such as
needles and pins, and bar-stock for the smith. Virtually everything else could be and was made by the
people living here. The village was mostly self-sufficient, which was a source of bitter pride, for no one
wanted to come here anymore. ErroldтАЩs Grove could have dropped off the face of the world and no one
would miss it.
I certainly wouldnтАЩt, Darian thought with bitterness of his own.
He had to pass through one of the busier corners of the village to reach the woodpile, going
around both the smithy and the baker. The savory scent of bread coming from the door of the bakery
told the boy that Leander was removing loaves from the big brick oven that took up all of the back half
of his shop. As for the smith, he was obviously hard at work, as the smithy rang with the blows of
hammer on anvil, there was a scent of hot metal and steam on the breeze, and smoke coming from the
smokehole in the roof. Leander wouldnтАЩt pay any attention to Darian as he passed, but there was a
chance that the smith might.
The smithy was a three-sided shed, the forge in the middle, the anvil toward the front. There was
a fat old gray plowhorse waiting patiently for his feet to be attended to, tied to the post outside the
smithy, and its owner, a man called Backet, watched as the smith hammered out a new shoe for it.
Blacksmith Jakem, a huge, balding man with an incongruous paunch beneath his leather apron, paused in
his work to watch Darian pass by, his eyes narrowed. Darian ignored him, as he usually ignored the
adults of the village when he thought he could get away with it. Jakem didnтАЩt think much of Darian, but
that was hardly out of the ordinary. Darian didnтАЩt think much of Jakem either. As he made the return trip
with his three small logs, the smith hawked and spat into the fire.
тАЬAinтАЩt nobody works as hard as a lazy тАШun,тАЭ he said loudly to the farmer sitting on a stump beside
the forge.
тАЬThatтАЩs the plain truth,тАЭ Old Man Backet agreed, taking off his hat to scratch his head. тАЬLazy тАШun
will work twiceтАЩs hard as anybody else, tryinтАЩ to avoid working at all.тАЭ He cast a sly look at Darian as he
replied, to see if his words had struck a nerve.
Darian continued to ignore them; so long as the adults didnтАЩt address him directly, there was a
certain amount of immunity that being only thirteen gave him. HeтАЩd learned some time ago that a retort
would only earn him trouble with his Master. Not that Wizard Justyn had ever laid a hand on him - but
the reproachful lectures on how much he owed the villagers of ErroldтАЩs Grove and how little he repaid