"Jody Lynn Nye - Defender of the Small" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nye Jody Lynn)

- Chapter 22

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 - Chapter 22




Defender of the Small
Jody Lynn Nye

Dawna Keen-Eyed upended her water skin and drank the few last drops. Walking the rough horse track
between villages was thirsty work, but she was happy. It was better to be breathing country air full of the
smells of new-cut hay, wood smoke and pig poop than blood, rot, burning oil and the smell of corpses
beginning to decay. The way the land sloped, the river shouldn't be far ahead, and by it the town where
perhaps a decent meal and a clean bed waited. Her longsword, carefully cleaned from the last battle and
wrapped in its oiled cloth, and her shield with its red stripe down the center bumped against the tall
woman's back with every step she took. The red pennant that indicated her status as a mercenary
fluttered from the hilt and tickled the back of her neck under her long, brown braid. King Drealin III
himself had handed the pennant back to her with a brief statement of gratitude, at the same time that the
paymaster gave her her fee. The money wasn't much, but it ought to last long enough for her to reach
home. For the moment she longed to sit down. Her legs were tired, and she had finally worn through the
thin place in the sole of her left boot.
Cabbage Town, the gold-lettered plaque read, as the track changed from mud to gravel at the edge of the
village. Dawna glanced around with pleasure. Life was here, not death. It was market day. Hearty
merchants wrangled with their customers, apple-cheeked women in kirtles and wimples, or tall men with
colorful liripipe hoods. Farmers argued about the relative merits of this or that cow. Dogs slept in the
sun.
A plump gray puss slept tucked up on a window sill beside a scarlet flower in a pot. An orange-striped
mother cat, her teats heavy with milk, wound about the legs of the tables on which the merchants' goods
were displayed.
A group of shouting and laughing children ranging in age from five to ten or eleven years old raced up
the hill along a lane that led up from the river that Dawna could now see from the village's main street.
They stopped to stare at the mercenary in armor with her pack and sword slung upon her back. She
smiled at them.
"Good day to you," she said, shifting the heavy load to the other shoulder.
Immediately the children went wide-eyed with distrust and curiosity.
"Are you here to conquer us?" asked a little girl with long plaits tied with blue ribbon.
Dawna laughed. "No, I'm just back from the wars."
"You were fighting?" asked the biggest boy, hair the color of fresh wood and eyes of leaf green.
"Indeed I was. I killed eight men in the last battle at Songhelm. I and my fellow sell-swords were in the
front line when we laid siege to the pirates' stronghold at Valorin on the coast. We broke the walls down
in only three days, and saved the town."
"Ooohhh!" the children gasped, awed.