"Mickey Zucker Reichert - Renshai 02 - The Western Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reichert Mickey Zucker)

games with cards, stones, or dice, their laughter booming over the chorus of insects, the whirring calls of
foxes, wolf howls, and the shy chitter of wisules. A general aura of fatigue still enwrapped the armies,
even though three weeks had passed since the Great War ended, but triumph sweetened the exhaustion,
tempering complaints and easing the grief over lost companions. Siderin had been defeated. The
Eastlands had taken thousands of casualties; a long time would pass before they threatened the West
again. And soon enough all the Westerners would be home.



Home. The word held little meaning for Colbey. Born during the Renshai's hundred-year exile from the
Northlands, he had spent his childhood rushing from battle to battle with his tribe, conquering, gathering
food and plunder, celebrating those lucky enough to die in the glory of battle, mourning those who lost
their lives to lingering injury or infection, and then charging into war again. When not engaged in battle, he
practiced for it or taught the techniques to others. To Colbey, violence was simply a way of life. He knew
no other.



Yet, in a matter of days or weeks, that would change. Rache had died in the Great War, leaving Colbey
as the only full-blooded Renshai in existence. And Colbey knew from experience that he could sire no
children, even had there still been a Renshai woman with whom to try.



These thoughts made Colbey frown. Standing just beyond the protecting canvas of the officers' quarters,
he stared out over fields so fertile they seemed to flow into one another like a vast green ocean. Fifty
years ago, he had stood in this same location, looking out over Westerners' crops in the moonlight. Then,
as always, his people had won the battle, but they had been the invaders not the defenders. Now,
Colbey looked out over the campsites of five thousand men, nearly thirty-five hundred of them under his
direct command, including the organized military of the great trading city of Pudar and the mustered
farmers of dozens of tiny towns. Colbey Calistinsson, the highest officer of the Westland's largest army.
The last of the Renshai led Westerners to war. The irony gnawed at him, quickly replaced by a sense of
obligation. But I'm not really the only Renshai.



Colbey knew that bloodline meant little. By their own ancient laws, sword skill, not breeding, defined the
Renshai. Rache's long-held belief that he was the last of the tribe had given him the right to teach the
Renshai combat maneuvers to another. He had chosen Mitrian, the daughter of a town leader named
Santagithi, who was the general of the remaining soldiers in the camp and the West's master strategist.



A good choice. Mitrian had a natural grace and dedication to the art; logically, Colbey supported
Rache's decision. Yet deep within, he could not help wondering if it would have been better to let the
Renshai remain dead in the eyes of the world after the bloody slaughter by neighboring Northmen that
had destroyed all of the Renshai except Rache and himself. He thought of the red harvest of violence that
the Renshai had once casually reaped across the world, spurring a hatred so deep that, in some
countries, simply speaking the name was cause for execution. Better for all, perhaps, if the
"Golden-Haired Devils from the North'' remained the corpses everyone believed them to be.