"Stephen Lawhead - Pendragon Cycle 02 - Merlin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawhead Stephen)

Grandfather Elphin and grandmother Rhonwyn were always happy to see me and devoted themselves to
spoiling me on my visits, undoing months of my mother's hard work. Charis never complained, never
hinted at what she thought of their indulgence, but let them have their way with me. This eventually
included weapons lessons undertaken by Lord Elphin's battlechief, a crag of a man named Cuall, who
strove with me and some of the younger boys, although he had a warband to look after as well.

Cuall it was who made my first sword out of ashwood; my first spear also. The sword was thin and light
and no longer than my arm, but to me it was a blade invincible. With that wooden weapon he taught me
thrust and counter-thrust, and the quick, back-handed chop; and with the spear, to throw accurately with
either hand off either foot. He taught me how to sit a horse and guide it with my knees, and how, when
need arose, to use the hapless beast as a shield.

In my sixth year, I spent all summer with grandfather Elphin тАФ Hafgan and Cuall all but fighting over me.
Between them, I saw little of anyone else all summer. My mother came and stayed for a few days, and at
first I was disappointed to see her, thinking that she would take me home again. But she just wanted to
see how I fared.

Once satisfied that it was right and necessary тАФ as both Hafgan and Cuall insisted тАФ she returned to
Ynys Avallach and I stayed at Caer Cam. This began a pattern that was to continue for several years:
winter at Ynys Avallach with Dafyd and Blaise, and summer at Caer Cam with Elphin and Cuall.

Lord Elphin's caer was a world apart from Avallach's palace: one bespoke the cool heights of intellectual
refinement and otherworldly grace, the other the earthy reality of stone and sweat and steel. 'Brains and
blood,' Cuall aptly put it one day.

'Lord?'

'Brains and blood, boy,' he repeated, 'that's what you have, and what every warrior needs.'

'Will I be a warrior?'

'If I can do anything about it, you will right enough,' he said, resting his thick forearms on the pommel of
his long sword. 'Och, but you have Lleu's own way about you: quick as water, and light of foot as a cat;
already you tax my craft. All you want is muscle on those bones of yours, lad, and from the look of you
that will come in time.'

I was pleased with his pronouncement, and knew hewas right. I was much quicker than the other boys; I
could make good account of myself with boys twice my age, and fend off any two my own size. The ease
with which my body accommodated whatever I asked of it, seemed to some uncanny, but to me only
natural. That everyone could not meld and move mind and body so skilfully was something new to me.
And, though it shames me to admit it, I did wear my prowess with insufferable conceit.

Humility, if it comes at all, almost always comes too late.
 So, I learned two things early: I would live long, and I would be a warrior king. The third thing, Blaise's
Mantle of Authority, would be discovered by me or it would not; I saw no reason to strive after it, so
thought no more about it.

But I badly wanted to be a warrior. Had I possessed even the tiniest suspicion of how heavily this
aspiration weighed on my mother, I might have reined in my enthusiasm somewhat, at least in her
presence. I was blind and silly with it, though, and talked almost of nothing else.