"Jerry Pournelle & Roland Green - Janissaries 3 - Storms of Victory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

nearest tobacco wasn't ten light-years away. There was a kind of aromatic
grass that grew in the High
Cumac, and some of the troopers made it into cigarettes; Mason had tried it
once. The stuff was probably related to madweed. It gave a mild high, nothing
like enough to compensate for the awful taste.
Morrone was trying hard not to fidget or look nervous, but %you could tell he
wasn't too happy over the prospect of somebody's hired goons screwing up his
friend's wedding. A lot of people on this planet believed in omens. The sentry
was bad enough. If some high muckety-muck did get offed-
"Happened on my watch," Mason muttered. Not that all crime was his
responsibility, but this was no burglar caught in the act by the sentry. Thin
cord around the man's neck, dagger in just the right place. A professional job.
"Damn professional," Mason muttered. "Green Berets?"
It was worth thinking about. Most of the Earth troops here on this screwy
planet had some training in the dirty tricks department, and some of them had
been Green Beret before the CIA hired them off to go mucking about in
Africa.
All our troops are accounted for, Mason thought. But there's a dozen off with
Gengrich. Gengrich's ambassador in yonder house. Says no starmen with him.
None I recognized. But one could have been smuggled in
Or, what the hell, there's no shortage of local talent good enough to do that
job.
Wish it hadn't happened on my watch.
"Watch ho!" someone called. Mason heard the Outer Gate guards respond.
There were sounds of horses and centaurs. "Who is there?"
Mason couldn't make out the words of the response, but one of the voices
sounded familiar. The gate opened, and a smaller number of horses and
centaurs came through the wall into the Outer Bailey.
A small mounted party guided by two Guardsmen with torches appeared at
the gate end of the street. Five armored men, a couple of unarmored ones, and
a banner-bearer carrying the red raven banner of the Bheroman of Westrook.
By God, Mason thought. Ben Murphy. Grown pretty big for a private. Of
course I was only a corporal when we came here.
Ben Murphy had defended Castle Westrook and its lands after the Westmen
rode down out of the High Plains. When the Westmen killed Lord Harkon and
most of his knights, the
King had created Murphy a real honest-to-Yatar Drantos nobleman, so that on
the local scale of rank he was senior to everybody else from Earth except the
Captain himself....
"Hello, Art. How are things?"
"I'll be damned!"
"I hope not." The lead rider reined in, dismounted, and came over to Mason. It
was Ben Murphy all rightтАФno mistaking that big Irish nose or the way he
walked. But until you got up close and saw the shoulder holster with the .45 in
it, you couldn't tell him from your standard Drantos ironhat.
"Like I said, Art, how are things?"
"Could be worse, could be worse. Everybody and their Aunt Ermentrude's
come to town for the wedding, so if you're looking for a billet in the castleтАФ"
"No way. MyтАФLord Harkon's son Jan'sтАФgrandmother wants to look me
over, see if I'm the right sort to be raising her daughter's son. She's the