"H. Beam Piper - The Space Viking" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

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their hands plainly in sight, and seemed wishing themselves elsewhere. The man
in front wore a diamond sunburst jewel on his beret, and his cloak was lined
with pale blue silk. His thin, pointed face was deeply lined about the mouth
and penciled with a thin black mustache. His eyes showed white all around the
irises, and now and then his mouth would twitch in an involuntary grimace.
Andray Dunnan; Trask wondered briefly how soon he would have to look at hum
from twenty-five meters over the sights of a pistol. The face of the slightly
taller man who stood at his shoulder was paperwhite, expressionless, with a
black beard. His name was Nevil Ormm; nobody was quite sure whence he had
come, and he was Dunnan's henchman and constant companion.

"You lie!" Dunnan was shouting. "You lie damnably, in your stinking teeth, all
of you! You've intercepted every message she's tried to send me."

"My daughter has sent you no messages, Lord Dunnan," Sesar Karvall said, with
forced patience. "None but the one I just gave you, that she wants nothing
whatever to do with you."

"You think I believe that? You're holding her a prisoner; Satan only knows how
you've been torturing her to force her into this abominable marriage."

There was a stir among the bystanders; that was more than well-mannered
restraint could stand. Out of the murmur of incredulous voices, one woman's
was quite audible:

"Well, really! He actually is crazy!"

Dunnan, like everybody else, heard it. "Crazy, am 1?" he blazed. "Because I
can see through this hypocritical sham? Here's Lucas Trask-he wants an
interest in Karvallmills; and here's Sesar Karvallhe wants access to iron
deposits on Traskon land. And my loving uncle-he wants the help of both of
them in stealing Omfray of Glaspyth's duchy. And here's this loan shark of a
Ffayle, trying to claw my lands away from me, and Rovard Grauffls, the
fetchdog of my uncle who won't lift a finger to save his kinsman from ruin,
and this foreigner Harkaman who's swindled me out of command of the
Enterprise. You're all plotting against me."

"Sir Nevil," Grauffis said, "you can see that Lord Dun-

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nan's not himself. If you're a good friend to him, you'll get him out of here
before Duke Angus arrives."

Ormm leaned forward and spoke urgently in Dunnan's ear. Dunnan pushed him
angrily away.