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

6 John Maddox Roberts
melted in the furnaces to free it of the last bits of concrete matrix. The molten steel was then cast into ingots for easy transportation. Prodigious effort was expended each year to bring fuel, supplies and laborers to this site, but steel was so valuable that King Hael bore the expense gladly.
Around the rim of the crater, mounted men patrolled constantly. Workers were not allowed to ascend to the rim save where the path notched its edge. They were allowed only in the crater and the camp. Any who were caught trying to get to high ground to spot landmarks were assumed to be spies and punished accordingly.
"Well, what do you say?" urged the elder brother.
"Don't press me, Ansa. This will take some thought. We have three days yet.''
"During which time you will decide to remain a dutiful son, no doubt. Well, you may do as you like. I am riding south as soon as the season ends."
Kairn was thoughtful as they rode back to their tent at the end of the day. It vexed him to admit that he lacked an adventurous spirit. He was almost eighteen, and had been a warrior for more than two years. Perhaps it took more than fine weapons and a cabo to ride to make a warrior. He patted the beast's neck and it tossed its handsome, four-horned head proudly. All around him exhausted workers trudged toward their pallets. These were short, dark men, strongly built but without the fierce poise of the mounted warriors.
Kairn shuddered at the thought of leading such a life, toiling on the land or at some other equally ignoble labor instead of riding free across the endless plain. Surely, he thought, he would die before living like that. These were the stolid peasants of the southern lands, for whom his desert was just a hotter, drier place to work. They endured the hardship in return for generous pay, half of which would be claimed by their sovereigns. They deserved no better, he supposed. Men so spiritless that they would not fight should
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be grateful for any crumbs dropped to them from the tables of their betters.
He curried his cabo and turned it loose in the circular compound walled with piled rock. With a happy snort it trotted to the watering trough. Every drop was laboriously brought from the nearest river in wagon-mounted casks. The animals got as much as they needed. Men had to make do with less. There were more than three hundred of the creatures hi the pen, each animal's horns painted with the distinctive colors and patterns favored by its rider.
Under the shade of the open-sided tent, the temperature was just bearable. The half-dozen warriors within made space for Kairn, but they paid him no special deference. The riders did not understand royalty as it was practiced in more settled nations. He was passed a water skin and he took a handful of dried food from a communal bowl. As he munched the tasteless mixture of pounded dried meat, fruit and parched grain, he thought of the cities of the south.
He had never seen them, but he had heard his father's stories of the fabulous lands to the west and south. Older warriors who had fought in the king's wide-ranging campaigns had described the sumptuous cities, their temples and public buildings, their strange entertainments and their women who (in the warrior's stories) always seemed to prefer virile nomads to their effete, civilized menfolk. He felt the tug of attraction, a curiosity to see those places, but he also loved the boundless plain. He wanted to see the exotic cities, but maybe next year would be soon enough, or the year after.
Not so his elder brother. Ansa talked of little else than travel hi foreign lands. He had ridden on a few caravan escorts to the borders of Omia to the west and the Canyon territory to the south, and this had whetted his appetite for more. For the last two years he had fretted to be away, but their father had sent few missions in that direction recently, being preoccupied with the east.
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No, he would return home at the end of this season. It would be good to be away from this place.
The laborers sang as they left the crater behind. They wore tunics or kilts that had once been white and most wore head scarves or conical hats of woven straw. The hornlike soles of their feet seemed to be immune to the heat of the desert floor, and their teeth flashed white in their dark faces.
Ansa turned for the last time and waved. From the rim of the crater, his brother waved back. Then Ansa set his face to the south and sternly suppressed any further sentimental gestures. He cursed his younger brother's timidity and lack of enterprise. Ansa longed to roam free, but he would have liked company. The brothers had been close all their lives, especially these last few years, when their father had grown so preoccupied with the easterners and their fire-weapons.
But they were boys no longer, he reminded himself. And had King Hael not begun his career in this very fashion? Early in his life Ansa had wearied of the story of how his father had come across the mountains with the first trade caravan from Neva, owning a spear, a knife, a longsword and a single cabo. Now he was a king. But then, his father was a great visionary, a man touched by the spirits.
In any case, Ansa had no ambitions to be a king. He just wanted to sample life away from his familiar world of hills and grasslands. As a boy he had been impatient and argumentative, unlike his younger brother. He had pushed himself to excel in the warrior arts and had suifered agonies of frustration at each slightest failure. A fall at wrestling, which Kairn could laugh off, would cause Ansa to sulk for days. He was long past such childish moods, but he yearned to test himself and he saw no sense in waiting.
He fretted at the slow pace of the march. Not only did they have to travel at the pace of walking men, but the route was tortuous, with many circlings and switchbacks. At in-
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tervals the workers were blindfolded or made to march after dark. He knew that it was necessary to keep the men from understanding where they had been, thus keeping secret the location of the crater, but it was galling to spend ten days on a march that could have been accomplished in two.
Ansa could have wept with joy on their final day in the desert. The breeze carried the scent of water and growing things. All up and down the file of mounted guards the cabos made their strange, rumbling sound of happy anticipation. Ansa reined in his mount as it tried to break into a run. He patted its neck and leaned toward its ear.
"Easy, my pet. We're still miles from the river. No sense running now. We'll be there before nightfall." He felt like running himself.
They camped that night near the first river of the Canyon territory. It was a small stream, but after the desert it was a blessing and they had to watch the cabos carefully lest they drink too much and founder. The workers were scarcely less thirsty and they rushed down the muddy bank to sprawl on their bellies, sucking up the now-murky liquid in prolonged draughts. The warriors showed more self-control, first allowing their mounts to drink, then wading upstream to clearer water before leaning from their saddles to dip from the stream with wooden bowls.
The natives who inhabited nearby villages had long grown accustomed to these visitations, and soon traders appeared with such goods as they knew these visitors craved. Fresh foods and strong drink were in high demand. The village women were ill-favored by nomad standards, but some were not so discriminating and they found many eager customers among the workmen, who were happy to spend their pay before the tax-gatherers took it.
Ansa sat at the fire with some other warriors, eating and drinking and talking endlessly, after the immemorial fashion of off-duty warriors. The tender meat of fat domestic animals was a great luxury to them, after weeks of tough
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game or dried rations. The king periodically issued stem injunctions against overindulgence in wine and beer, which were scarce in their homeland, although more common now that they traded so widely. His subjects agreed that these were wise rules and proceeded to ignore them every chance they got.
"We'll stay here for ten days," said Bulas, an older Ma-twa warrior who was in command of the mission. "The cabos can eat and drink and fatten up in that time."
"So can we," said a younger man, his voice unsteady with drink.
"I won't be returning with you," Ansa said. Bulas peered at him through the smoke. "What do you mean?"
Ansa took another swallow of the pleasantly bitter beer. "I mean to stay here and push south. Til rejoin you at the crater next year or the year after.''
"That would be unwise," Bulas said. "You may be taken prisoner and tortured to reveal the site of the steel mine." Ansa shrugged. "I'll claim to be from one of the southeastern peoples, a Ramdi or Ensata. Foreigners will never know the difference. Even if they've been on missions to our territory, my brother and I don't much resemble the Amsi orMatwa."
"How will you be able to bear it?" asked an Amsi his own age. "To be alone in a foreign land, without kinsman or tribesman is terrible. If you are sick or wounded, who will guard you? If you die, who will perform the rites?"
"I'll take my chances," Ansa said. "You accomplish nothing if you lake no risks." Then* after a pause, "I confess, though, that I would as soon not travel alone. Will any of you accompany me?" He looked from one to another, but their expressions were doubtful. He had not expected otherwise. The tribesmen were profoundly conservative. His father's merging of the peoples had been shock enough to last a generation, and they were reluctant to face any further
innovations. They loved to roam widely, but only in large, strong groups. In the end, he found no volunteers.
A few days later he rode from the campsite. His mount had regained its sleekness and spirit and was eager for travel. He bade his companions farewell with a light heart, but as soon as he was beyond sight of them, he felt his stomach tighten with trepidation. Until now, he had put up a brave show, but the reality of what he was doing gave him pause. He was now alone in a way he had never experienced before. He shook himself and thrust the mood aside. He had chosen his path and he would pursue it, come what may.
By midday his dread was gone and he found himself singing an old Amsi traveling song. As he passed people working in the fields flanking the road, they glanced up but paid him no special note. He wore short boots and baggy trousers of light cloth girdled by a broad leather belt. He wore a shirt and a light cloak against the still fierce sun, and his ornaments he had acquired as gifts or from traders over the years. No one could have named his nation by his appearance and he was just another anonymous traveler, as he had intended.
Even his steel weapons would not identify him as one of King Hael's subjects. The lively trade in steel meant that weapons of the precious metal were no longer as rare as they had been. His steel longsword, still a rarity outside Hael's dominions, would not be apparent unless he had to draw it, at which time he would not be worrying about revealing his nationality.
He followed the river as it wound through the cultivated tend, and occasionally he crossed oddly straight streams branching from the river. At first he thought these were Х natural but soon he realized that they were irrigation ditches. The land was so arid that only by tapping water from the river could agriculture be sustained. He knew that somewhere to the south this tributary would join the great River Kol.
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This was Canyon land, but the local farmers were a peasant people related to the laborers he had escorted from the pit. The true Canyon dwellers formed an aristocracy, very mysterious and credited by most people with great powers of sorcery. He had never seen any of these strange folk, for they never traveled far from their own land and always traded through intermediaries. Of all the foreign peoples he had heard of, these intrigued him the most. It was not because of their sumptuous cities, for their land was poor in material goods. It was because of their rumored powers and their sheer strangeness. It was said that their skins were blue, their hair white, and their eyes a veritable rainbow of colors. They were not particularly warlike, but no army had ever managed to advance against them, though many had tried. All such invasions turned back, generals and soldiers alike swearing they had been defeated by sorcery.
He was curious to meet these people, of whom his father had spoken frequently. He did not travel in expectation of meeting hostility. Most people reacted to a lone traveler with curiosity or disdain but seldom with mindless aggression. Isolated people usually wanted contact from outside, as long as it represented no danger, and cosmopolitan people took strangers in their midst as a matter of course. It was large, heavily armed groups entering their territory that alarmed most people.