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

Lady Lavina Karvall was the center of a cluster of matrons and dowagers,
around whom tomorrow's bridesmaids fluttered like many-colored butterflies.
She took possession of her daughter and dragged her into the feminine circle.
He saw Rovard Grauffis, small and saturnine, Duke Angus' henchman, and Burt
Sandrasan, Lady Lavina's brother. They spoke, and then an upper-servant, his
tabard blazoned with the yellow flame and black hammer of Karvallmills,
approached his master with some tale of domestic crisis, and the two went away
together.

"You haven't met Captain Harkaman, Lucas," Rovard Grauffis said. "I wish you'd
come over and say hello and have a drink with him. I know your attitude, but
he's a good sort. Personally, I wish we had a few like him around here."

That was his main objection. There were ever and fewer men of that sort on any
of the SwordWorlds.

9

II




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A DOZEN men clustered around the bartending robot-his cousin and family
lawyer, Nikkolay Trask; Lothar Ffayle, the banker; Alex Gorram, the
shipbuilder, and his son Basil; Baron Rathmore; more of the Wardshaven nobles
whom he knew only distantly. And Otto Harkaman.

Harkaman was a Space Viking. That would have set him apart even if he hadn't
topped the tallest of them by a head. He wore a short black jacket, heavily
gold-braided, and black- trousers inside ankle-boots; the dagger on his belt
was no mere dress-ornament. His tousled red-brown hair was long enough to
furnish extra padding in a combat-helmet, and his beard was cut square at the
bottom.

He had been fighting on Durendal, for one of the branches of the Royal house
contesting fratricidally for the throne. The wrong one; he had lost his ship,
and most of his men and, almost, his own life. He had been a penniless refugee
on Flamberge, owning only the clothes he stood in and his personal weapons and
the loyalty of half a dozen adventurers as penniless as himself, when Duke
Angus had invited him to Gram to command the Enterprise.

"A pleasure, Lord Trask. I've met your lovely bride-to-be, and now that I meet
you, let me congratulate both." Then, as they were having a drink together, he
put his foot in it by asking, "You're not an investor in the Tanith Adventure,
are you?"