"S. M. Stirling - Dies the Fire 03 - A Meeting at Corvallis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

on their shoulders; their eyes moved ceaselessly behind the splayed nasal bars of their conical helmets.
There were discreet crossbowmen along the second-story galleries as well.
After a moment the woman seated in the other throne reached out and touched his arm. Arminger
noddedтАФSandra and he had played good cop/bad cop very effectively for yearsтАФand spoke:
"You may rise, Lord Molalla, and approach the throne."
The three kneeling figures stood: a man, a woman and a boy of about nine. The trumpeter beside the
throne raised his long brass instrument and blew a simple tune, two rising and one falling note. The herald
cried:
"The Lord Jabar Jones, Baron Molalla! The Lady Phillipa! Their son, Lord Chaka! You are bidden
to approach the Presence!"
The knights before Arminger's throne stepped aside in perfect unison as the three approached,
swinging like a door. Then they swung back and turned, which put themтАФand their ready
swordsтАФwithin three feet of the petitioners. Sandra's guardians remained facing outward, like iron
statues with living, hungry eyes.
Jabar JonesтАФBaron MolallaтАФwas a big man, an inch or two over Arminger's six-one, and similarly
broad-shouldered, though unlike his overlord he'd added the beginnings of a paunch, despite being a little
younger than the Lord Protector's mid-forties. His cannonball head was shaved and the color of eggplant
save for a few dusty-white scars. He'd been a gang leader before the Change; Lady Phillipa was a
Junoesque redhead of a little over thirty, and came from the other major element among the Protector's
original cadre of supporters, the SCA тАж these days known as the Society.
The Society's notion of clothing, or "garb" as they called it, had prevailed over the years, at least for
the Portland Protective Association's upper classes, as had many of their notions. Phillipa wore an
elaborate wrapped and pinned headdress of white silk that surrounded her face and fell to the shoulders
of her long blue gown. The dress was what they called a cotte-hardi; jeweled buttons ran up from a belt
of gold chain links to the lace at her throat, and down the long sleeves. For men garb had worked out to
loose trousers, boots, linen shirt, belted thigh-length t-tunic and flat hats with a roll of fabric around the
edge and dangling cloth tails; the only exceptions in the room were servants, clergy of the Orthodox
Catholic Church in their long monastic robes or colorful dalmatics, and some foreign guests.
Arminger's clothes were the same, but in black silk, and he added silver plates to his sword belt, a
gold chain around his neck that supported a pendant of the Lidless Eye on his chest, and a niello
headband to confine his shoulder-length brown hair. That was receding a little from his high forehead; the
features below were harshly aquiline, lines graven from nose to mouth, and the eyes were an amber hazel.
Molalla wore no sword belt. That was a political statement just now, as was his willingness to
promptly obey the summons to courtтАФsome would have thought raising the drawbridges in his barony
more prudent, though that was a counsel of desperation. The way his wife's eyes occasionally darted to
Sandra Arminger's face was probably political appraisal by Phillipa, too. The women had been friends.
She evidently didn't find the stony calm on the face of Arminger's consort very reassuring.
The way the guardian knights stood within arm's reach behind them wasn't reassuring either. It wasn't
meant to be.
"You may speak," Arminger growled to the man.
"My lord, I have petitioned to be allowed to explain my error before thisтАФ"
"You're lucky I didn't let you come near me until now, Jabar," he said. "I was waiting until I could be
sure I could control my temper. I'm not a forgiving man by nature. My confessor and His Holiness Leo
tell me it's my greatest fault."
A ripple of chuckles ran through the court, except for a few of the clerics. Arminger grinned inwardly,
behind an impassive mask
Actually, I was wondering what Strongbow or the Conqueror would have done, he thought.
The Norman duchy and its offshoots from Ireland to Sicily and the Crusader principalities had been
his area of study, back when he'd been a scholar, before the Change. Playing at knights had been his
recreation, a way to live a little of the life those civilized Vikings knew. But the contacts that had given