"LeGuin-Olders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

deep."

The doctor looked with pity and respect at the Farmwife, at her bare feet and
her clear, bewildered eyes. "Dema," he said, "let us bring him in to the
warmth."

"Yes, yes," she said, rising and running ahead to prepare.

When the stretcher bearers came out again, half the people of Sandry were in the
courtyard waiting to hear their news. Most of all they looked to old Pask when
he came out, and he looked at them all. He was a big, slow man, girthed like an
oak, with a stiff face set in deep lines. "Will he live?" a woman ventured. Pask
continued looking them all over until he chose to speak. "We'll plant him," he
said.

"Ah, ah!" the woman cried, and a groan and sigh went among them all.

"And our grandchildren's children will know his name," said Dyadi, Pask's wife,
bossoming through the crowd to her husband. "Hello, old man."

"Hello, old woman," Pask said. They eyed each other from an equal height.

"Still walking, are you?" she said.

"How else get back where I belong?" Pask said. His mouth was too set in a
straight line to smile, but his eyes glinted a little.

"Took your time doing it. Come on, old man. You must be perishing." They strode
off side by side toward the lane that led to the saddlery and paddocks. The
courtyard buzzed on, all in low-voiced groups around the other two returned men,
getting and giving the news of the wars, the city, the marsh isles, the farm.

Indoors, in the beautiful high shadowy room where Farre now lay in the bed still
warm from his wife's sleep, the physician stood by the bedside, as grave,
intent, careful as the polesman had stood in the stern of the channelboat. He
watched the wounded man, his fingers on the pulse. The room was perfectly still.

The woman stood at the foot of the bed, and presently he turned to her and gave
a quiet nod that said, Very well, as well as can be expected.

"He seems scarcely to breathe," she whispered. Her eyes looked large in her face
knotted and clenched with anxiety. "He's breathing," the escort assured her.
"Slow and deep. Dema, my name is Hamid, assistant to the Queen's physician, Dr.
Saker. Her majesty and the Doctor, who had your husband in his care, desired me
to come with him and stay here as long as I am needed, to give what care I can.
Her majesty charged me to tell you that she is grateful for his sacrifice, that
she honors his courage in her service. She will do what may be done to prove
that gratitude and to show that honor. And still she bade me tell you that
whatever may be done will fall short of his due."