"Janet Morris - Beyond Wizardwall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

"I'm just going to make her a little wider, Niko. She'll hardly feel it, the state she's in. Sit on her neck
and hold her head."
Automatically, the ex-Stepson did as he was bid, one more time. He couldn't see what Tempus was
doing behind his back, but he could feel the mare shudder and twitch.
Then she uttered one piercing scream and her forelegs jerked madly as she struggled to roll over, to rise
up. Niko had all he could do to obey the order he'd been given.
"Good, good. Hold firm. That's it, Niko," said Tempus, and then added: "Here it comesтАж that's got it."
And: "You can get off her neck. Get me some hot water, cat gut, a hot needle, clean cloths. AndтАж take
a look, on your way out."
The straw was full of blood and placenta, but in its midst an iron-black foal kicked shakily. Tempus
was wiping the mucus from its nostrils with his tunic's edge and Niko's sorrel mare was trying to help
him.
When he left the stall, Niko saw his mare nuzzling her newborn and Tempus, covered with mucus and
blood, grinning after him fondly.
Coming back with a bucket of water and an armful of cloths, he met Randal the wizard, slogging
through snow up to his bony knees.
"Stealth," Randal called Niko by his war name, "I got your message. Whatever's wrong with her, we'll
тАФ" "Randal, I didn't send for you, but I'm glad you're here." The scrawny wizard struggled to keep up.
"You are? "That's right. Not because of the mareтАФTempus and I took care of that without any magical
incantation or soul-rotting spells."
Randal tried not to show his disappointment, the depth of his hurt. Randal idolized Nikodemos, but
since coming back from the front, Niko had been treating him very shabbily. Fighters were moody and
Niko had been under terrible strainтАФ possessed by a witch, sought after as an earthly avatar by the very
entelechy of dreams, banned from the western Bandaran isles for consorting with magicians.


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 Morris, Janet - Beyond Wizardwall


So Randal only said, "I'm glad. The mare's out of danger? And the foal? Then perhaps I should be
getting backтАФ"
"No. You'll have to stay awhile. We have to dissolve our pairbond formally. You can do what you want,
wizard, but I've quit the Stepsons. There are plenty of fools who'll pair with you for j.tatus and mundane
advantageтАФor Tempus will keep you on as a single, I'mтАФ"
"You what?" Niko was a son of the armies; his unit, with its stringent and convoluted code of honor and
its lust for glory, was his entire life. Niko without his rank as squadron leader of the finest special forces
unit in the north was like Randal without his guild-standing, or Tempus without his curse: unthinkable.
"You heard me," Niko said. "I'm quit of you and all my former allegiances, after tonight. We'll go see
Crit and say the words, sign the papers. Then it's done."
"Done? Don't I have anything to say aboutтАФ"
Niko glanced at Randal sidelong; in the moonlight reflected from the snow, Niko's stare was so
eloquently threatening and so full of distaste that Randal broke off in mid-sentence.
If Stealth, called Nikodemos, had truly lost his taste for honor and glory, if the debauches Randal had
heard about from scandalized 3rd Commando regulars had taken its place, then there was nothing
Randal could do about it. He was part of Niko's problems, not his solutions.
But he was terribly sad, hurrying after his onetime left-side leader into the Stepson's Hidden Valley
barn.
Randal had given up a lot to be able to say "Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory." He saw in
Tempus's sad little smile when he spoke those words that he was expected to rise to this occasion, to