"Victor Milan - The Nobles 02 - War In Tethys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Milan Victor)

bound-hands symbol of Ilmater hung around his neck by a strand of thumb-thick duskwood beads.
He made a mournful face. "Ah," he said, "surely such a noble beast as yourself would not begrudge a
mendi-cant servant of Ilmater the modest pleasures of his table?" He had never entirely adjusted to the idea
of conversing with an apparently normal mare, but then Faerun was a realm of wonder, and Ilmater a
tolerant god.
"Of course not," Goldie said in a honeyed tone that instantly made Zaranda's eyes narrow. "But still, I
can-not help thinking of the burden on your poor mount's legs."
Father Pelletyr's face collapsed like a souffle in an oven around which an ettin has just commenced a
drunken clog dance. He began to fiddle with his beads and cast guilty downward looks at his ass. In so
doing he neglected to keep switching at her flanks with the little fir bough he carried for the purpose, and
the beast fell behind the longer-legged mare.
"Goldie!" Zaranda said sotto voce. "Now you've made the poor man feel guilty."
"Can I help it if he's oversensitive?"
The priest caught them up again. The trail had begun to wend downward. Ahead, it bent right, around a
knee of granite with a twisted scrub-cedar perched on its top.
"Was it really needful," he asked in mournful tones, "to take such a strange and circuitous route? Surely
there are easier roads into Tethyr."
It was a fair question. The secret path through the mountains had been rife with precipices and
rockslides. At a higher elevation, an avalanche had swept two mules and their packs away, but no men had
been lost, and the loss of goods had been minimal. Withal, the mountain crossing had been much easier than
what Zaranda and her companions had gone through to get the most valuable of the goods they carried.
"Surely there are," she replied, "and in consequence they're better attended by bandits and marauders of
every stripe. I'm a merchant, Father. Trading away danger for discomfort strikes me as a favorable
bargain."
"But surelyтАФoh, dear."
This last was directed down the trail. Zaranda and the Ilmater priest had come around the granite knee
to where they could see the end of the narrow defile, open-ing onto foothills rolling quickly away to the flat
green landscape of Tethyr.
The way was blocked by heaps of boulders, one to each side, and between them a dead fir sapling lay
across the path as a barricade. Behind the barrier sev-eral polearms could be seen waving tentatively, like
metal-tipped branches.
"Oh, no," Goldie said. "Not another adventure."
Reins and fir branch alike dropped from Father Pel-letyr's hands. Like most of Ilmater's ilk, he was no
fighting priest. With plump fingers, he began to fumble at his medallion.
"O Holy Ilmater, O Crying God, Succorer of Tyr the Blinded God, who suffered for us upon the rack,
friend to the oppressed, aid us your children nowтАФ"
From behind his little ass came the crunch of weighty hooves on granite pebbles. The little beast
scrambled to the side of the path with an agility that be-lied its burden to avoid being shouldered out of the
way by a rangy blood-bay gelding.
The gelding's rider, like the horse itself, was tall and spare, with long muscles that seemed to have been
carved of oak and weathered dark. He wore a leather tunic laced up the front with a rawhide thong,
trousers of muted leaf-green, knee-high boots of soft doeskin with fringed tops turned down. Across his
back was slung a quiver and a strung longbow. His right forearm was encased in a leather armlet. Guiding
his horse with his knees, the tall man touched the priest's arm gently with his left hand, while his right traced
the elven signs for Bide, Father. Father Pelletyr nodded, swallowed, and interrupted his prayer. The
newcomer gave him a grim smile.
It was the only kind of smile he was equipped for. He was handsome in a heavy-browed, brooding way,
with long black hair bound at his nape, a broad jaw shad-owed with stubble the sharpest razor could prune
but never clear, brown eyes dark as the woods around the Standing Stone of the Dalelands. He carried the
twin messages of serenity and menace.