"Roberts, John Maddox - Stormlands 03 - The Poisoned Lands UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts John Maddox)

Pegra examined the sentry's face-paint closely, making sure that the outlines were sharp and clear, and that no color blended sloppily into any other. It was well known among the men of the garrison that if a stinging insect landed on one's face, one just had to put up with it. Pegra had been known to have men flogged mercilessly for being on guard with smeared face-paint.
The commander made his way around the wall from one sentry-post to another. Along the river wall no one had
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anything to report. There was never anything to report on the river. The main duty of the sentries on the river wall was to keep an eye on Pegra's luxuriously appointed river-boat. As he walked the wall, he thought pleasantly of the fishing trip he planned for the coming afternoon. He would take his cronies and some professional ladies of the town. These last were in no way comparable with their sisters of the capital, but they were acceptable for this provincial hellhole. He would take along his two pretty new concubines. They were twins, no more than fifteen years old. In the midst of these musings he came to the post above the road gate. The sentry there was staring toward the western hills.
"What do you see?" Pegra demanded.
"Riders to the west, sir/1 the man said, "I think mere are some peasants running this way before them."
"Bandits, eh? They grow bold, to ride so near in daylight." He took his telescope from its belt case. The fine Nevan instrument was as much a mark of his rank as his gilt dress helmet. He fitted it to his eye and adjusted the focus. An early heat-haze made the picture wavery, but he could see that the riders were indeed herding some fleeing peasants before them. Even as he watched, a rider speared a running man through the back. The other riders sought to emulate him, pursuing the terrorized farmers across the cultivated fields. Pegra lowered the telescope.
"This is a strange sport," he muttered. Something here was not right.
Ordinarily, bandits struck outlying villages, usually at night, and were gone to their lairs in the hills by daylight. They killed peasants often, or captured them for sale to slavers, but they did not chase them for sport, certainly not under the very noses of a royal garrison.
"Sound the gong," Pegra ordered. "We'll have the cabo troop out after these rogues." He raised the glass again in time to see the last of the fleeing peasants skewered by a rider, whose exultant whoops he could now hear clearly.
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They were scarcely a bowshot away from the walls of the town.
Next to Pegra the alarm gong began to reverberate. Then the beating of the great bronzen disk ceased. "Commander!" said the sentry in a strangled voice.
"What is it?" He turned and saw the guard pointing up the road, beyond the now-circling riders. With a sinking feeling, Wan Pegra raised the glass again, looking past the mounted men. Over a low rise in the road came a column of men. The column was four files wide, and as they came into view the files split, two going to the right, two to the left. They came on endlessly, splitting and resplitting until a great army faced the town, rank upon rank of them, every man holding before him a tall, black shield. All of this happened so quickly that the garrison was still scrambling up the steps to the battlement when the black tide advanced.
"Gasam!" Pegra said, almost choking. "It's that madman who conquered Chiwa! Where did he come from?"
"From Chiwa, is my guess," said the sentry, with very little deference in his voice. "And I wish we had a real soldier in command just now."
Somehow, Wan Pegra took no offense at the man's tone. He was unable to feel anything except blinding terror. He tried to think of a quick, safe way to surrender. Even in his agitated state, though, he knew that to be futile. Gasam would accept the surrender of ordinary soldiers, to swell the ranks of his own army. Seldom did he allow officers to take service under him. Commanders, never. They would always be put to death. If they were captured after a fight they were executed swiftly to show the futility of resistance. If they surrendered without a fight they died slowly to demonstrate the consequences of weakness and cowardice.
To cover his fear and gain time to plan an escape, he shouted blustering orders to his officers and men. They ignored him, knowing their work well enough. Bows were strung, sheaves of arrows and bundles of javelins were
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brought up from the arsenal, along with crates of round, smooth stones for the stingers.
While all this bustle went on, Pegra slipped below, ostensibly to don his field harness. No one watched him go, since every man had his own concerns just then. As his concubines cowered wide-eyed in a comer, he dashed through his quarters, stuffing his most valuable and portable possessions into a sack. He threw off his dress helmet and cuirass and donned a nondescript tunic.
With the sack over his shoulder, he raced to the river gate. He was ignored, as everyone in the town had rushed to the road side to gawk at their oncoming doom. Panting with fright, he shoved the locking bar aside and tugged the gate open. He dashed through the gate, not bothering to reclose it. The town was no longer his concern. Almost tumbling down the riverbank, he ran out along the wooden wharf and threw the sack into his riverboat, leaping in after it, cutting the mooring line with his dagger in his haste.
As the boat began to drift downstream with the current, he breathed more easily. Already, he could hear screams coming from the town. In all probability, no one would be spared. Relaxing a little now, he started to devise a story that would stand up at court. He would tell how he had conducted the defense of Marn until his last man fell, of how, barely escaping with his life, he had contrived to board this boatЧno, he dived into the river, arrows and javelins splashing all around him, and found this boat drifting, boarded it and hurled his defiance at the thousands of howling savages on the shore, as he made his way south along the river, to bring his king this terrible news and render further heroic service. ...
The boat rounded a sandbar to the south of the town and his bowels liquified as he saw the line of mounted men, their cabos belly-deep in the water, grinning and shaking their long, cruel spears in anticipation of this excellent sport. Pegra would have dived overboard and tried to swim for it,
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but he could not swim. As they closed in he fell to his knees, clasped his hands before him and tried begging for his life, but mat did not work either.
Gasam watched the town burn with some satisfaction. It was larger than he had expected, so there would be good provision for his army, which was beginning to get hungry. He had not asked for surrender in his usual fashion, because he wanted his newer troops лo be blooded now, while it was safest. The small garrison had fought stoutly, despite the futility of the odds. This pleased him, for it allowed his least experienced men to think they had been in a fight, and it meant that, later in the campaigr^he could expect to acquire some high-quality soldiers when enemy regiments sensibly surrendered on his terms.
He had achieved complete surprise, as he had expected. More importantly, the garrison here had been commanded by a fool, just some court appointee. This was the sign of a foolish, overconfident king, who gave idiots with high connections commands considered undesirable. That meant that Luo and Urlik would probably encounter commanders similarly ineffectual. Only after the army was reunited and inarching on the capital would the king of Sono understand that his very throne was in danger and send forth a competent commander, if indeed he had such a man in his employ. This was shaping up into a wonderful campaign.
Stalker padded through the dense jungle growth as silently as a ghost. For the last few days the army had been passing through jungle country, and the women were out as flankers, charged with kilting guerillas and spies. Stalker greatly enjoyed this duty. Like her sisters, she had chafed at the necessary but arduous marching. That was a tedious business, with no opportunities for glory or bloodshed.
It had been so different in the king's earlier campaigns, when they had traveled by ship from one island to another,
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overrunning each and subduing or slaughtering its inhabitants. Then, the elite corps of the women warriors had lounged on deck, renewing their paint or dressing each others' hair, while the sailors saw to their transportation. When it came time to fight, which was to say, to justify their existence, they seized their weapons and attacked whomever the king told them to.
The later campaigns on land had been similarly enjoyable, for the distance had not been great, and there had been much righting with relatively little marching.
Now she was happy and content, performing with consummate skill a duty the men in the army could not have done half so well. Even the Shasinn, wonderful warriors that they were, were not at home in the jungle like Stalker and her sisters. None had sight or hearing so keen, none could move so lightly on their feet, or avoid brushing the dense growth with such fluid grace.
Stalker would have been esteemed a comely woman in civilized lands had it not been for her outlandish and bizarre ornamentation. Her tawny hair, clubbed behind her neck, was threaded through hollowed out human fingerbones. Her cheeks were laced with parallel scars, and further scars, carved in stripes and spirals, decorated her breasts, belly, thighs, buttocks and upper arms. They had been incised with a ritual flint knife and the wounds rubbed with a mixture of pumice, fat and soot to cause the flesh to heal in raised welts of a deep blue color. Besides these she bore many less symmetrical but equally honorable scars earned hi battle, training and hunting. Her full lips were further everted by a small lip plug of jade and the pointed bronze caps that reinforced her teeth. Gold hoops dangled from her ears, the septum of her nose, and her pierced nipples.
That morning, she had painted her body in jungle colors laid on in broad streaks. Only her clear gray eyes shone through the mask of brown, green and black. She wore only a belt supporting a sheathed knife and she carried her fa-
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vorite weapon: a short spear with a slender, six-inch point of razor-edged steel. Of all Gasam's army, only the women warriors were fully equipped with steel weapons. She did not like swords or axes, preferring the elegant precision of her little spear.
As she prowled the jungle with the soundless deadliness of a hunting cat, she thought of her latest lover. He was a Shasinn junior warrior, and his sinewy, powerful body and tireless youthful virility perfectly matched her savage appetites. He found her barbaric bodily adornments exciting, and his hands would endlessly trace her ropy scars while they coupled like animals. He impaled her with his flesh as he impaled enemies with his spear and their sensuous struggles were nearly as violent as battles. For him, she was willing to scrub off her customary coat of animal fat and anoint her body with the fragrant fistnut oil so loved by the Shasinn.
Thoughts of her lover disappeared as she caught a hint of movement ahead of her. She paused, holding still as a statue until she saw the movement again. It was a patch of coppery skin just visible through a tiny gap in the brush fifty paces ahead. It flashed into view, vanished, and came back again a few feet farther to the left. She knew that it was a man, mat by his color he was not a member of the army, and that he was working his way closer to the army.
Her pulse quickened and warmth flooded her lower belly. This was an enemy and she would kill. Slowly and deliberately, she worked her way forward and to her right. She wanted to be directly behind the man before she commenced closing the distance between them. This was her special skill. She had earned her name with this art and hers was the patience of a stalking animal. Once behind him, she immediately cut his trail. Her prey probably passed for a skilled woodsman in these parts, but to her his trail was as clear as if he had tramped through leading a crippled nusk. A torn leaf, a fallen twig pushed out of alignment, a
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small pebble overturned to show its wet underside, the sharp scent of a crushed jungle herb, these were to her as the landmarks on a map. Once she found a partial print of a sandaled foot. She suppressed a snort of contempt. To her, footwear in the jungle was as absurd as court robes in battle.