"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 02 - Saber and Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

keep the slaves moving sprightly.

The old Fehinnan in front of her stumbled. She caught his elbow though she
felt weak herself. "Don't fall, Jaipahl. Don't you dare die on me." In the
foul dark air of the hold, he had been teaching her Fehinnan, as she had been
teaching him Zak.

"No. Not yet." His breathing was hoarse but steady. "Megan, it would be more
correct if you used a formal tone, speaking Fehinnan."
"As if I should care to speak correctly to a master? High, formal, Fehinnan in
a slave's mouth?" Jaipahl looked over his shoulder, raised and dropped one
shoulder in a half shrug, and smiled, thin white stubble on his cheek
creasing. Fehinnan had a fiendishly complicated system of honorific
inflections, altering the whole meaning depending on the status of the
speakers. Most of the sailors and slaves around her spoke a simplified pidgin.

"So, you plan to be a slave forever, a mofoar?"

She was panting too hard to answer, just shook her head, feet rising and
falling, shuffling to the drum. She looked down at the links between them,
concentrating on keeping her feet. This bit of exercise wouldn't have bothered
her a few weeks ago.

Then, she'd been able to feed herself things like fish oil so that the growth
of her claws wouldn't leech her blood of iron. The witch/healer who had given
them to her had explained that it would strain her body just to have steel
claws, that she would have to guard against blood-weakness by eating liver and
fish oil. Megan could hardly say to a slaver, "Excuse me, but I need a special
diet." Thank Koru, Goddess, that the claws grew so slowly or she'd have been
dead by now.

In the darkness of the hold, she felt chilled even in the baking heat that
made the ship's surgeon come down naked and leave after a few moments. She was
exhausted just by moving, short of breath, wanting anything with iron in it.
She tried chewing on her nails themselves, but only ended up worrying at the
skin around them. The lock on the end of the coffle was just within her reach,
the one bit of metal that she could lick, but it wasn't enough. She snorted to
herself. Never thought I'd live tone enough to develop cravings for liver. She
kept her hands closed loosely so that her nails wouldn't catch the sun. The
slavers hadn't noticed and she'd worn a deep groove in one link of the wooden
chain strung through her ankle manacles, despite the metallic hardness of the
tropical wood. The coffle was strung together with one chain looped through
foot shackles. One good twist would snap the link and she'd be free; she and
the other nine in the coffle. I need a shoreline to swim to before I try
anything, though.

The lookout shouted and the piper stopped with a squeal, standing up; the
drummer thumped on for a stroke or two men followed suit.

"Cap! Bad weather making!"