"George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire 0.2 - The Sworn Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

summer sun.

Egg stopped below to have a look at them. ?Who do you think they were,
ser?? His mule Maester, grateful for the respite, began to crop the dry
brown devilgrass along the verges, heedless of the two huge wine casks
on his back.

?Robbers,? Dunk said. Mounted atop Thunder, he was much closer to the
dead men. ?Rapers. Murderers.? Dark circles stained his old green tunic
under both arms. The sky was blue and the sun was blazing hot, and he
had sweated gallons since breaking camp this morning.

Egg took off his wide-brimmed floppy straw hat. Beneath, his head was
bald and shiny. He used the hat to fan away the flies. There were
hundreds crawling on the dead men, and more drifting lazily through the
still, hot air. ?It must have been something bad, for them to be left to
die inside a crow cage.?

Sometimes Egg could be as wise as any maester, but other times he was
still a boy of ten. ?There are lords and lords,? Dunk said. ?Some don?t
need much reason to put a man to death.?

The iron cage was barely big enough to hold one man, yet two had been
forced inside it. They stood face to face, with their arms and legs in a
tangle and their backs against the hot black iron of the bars. One had
tried to eat the other, gnawing at his neck and shoulder. The crows had
been at both of them. When Dunk and Egg had come around the hill, the
birds had risen like a black cloud, so thick that Maester spooked.

?Whoever they were, they look half starved,? Dunk said./Skeletons in
skin, and the skin is green and rotting./ ?Might be they stole some
bread, or poached a deer in some lord?s wood.? With the drought entering
its second year, most lords had become less tolerant of poaching, and
they hadn?t been very tolerant to begin with.

?It could be they were in some outlaw band.? At Dosk, they?d heard a
harper sing ?The Day They Hanged Black Robin.? Ever since, Egg had been
seeing gallant outlaws behind every bush.

Dunk had met a few outlaws while squiring for the old man. He was in no
hurry to meet any more. None of the ones he?d known had been especially
gallant. He remembered one outlaw Ser Arlan had helped hang, who?d been
fond of stealing rings. He would cut off a man?s fingers to get at them,
but with women he preferred to bite. There were no songs about him that
Dunk knew./Outlaws or poachers, makes no matter. Dead men make poor
company./ He walked Thunder slowly around the cage. The empty eyes
seemed to follow him. One of the dead men had his head down and his
mouth gaping open./He has no tongue,/ Dunk observed. He supposed the
crows might have eaten it. Crows always pecked a corpse?s eyes out
first, he had heard, but maybe the tongue went second./Or maybe a lord