"SM Stirling - & David Drake - General 08 - The Tyrant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

This too, gods, was my doing. Damn me if you will.аа

By now, of course, his daughter had noticed him. Demansk could see her examining him out of the side of her eyes. She would have detected him long before he arrived, in fact. She was as alert as any skirmisher in Demansk's legions, and would have made a better sentry than most.

But she said nothing, allowing her father the same room he had always allowed her. That was her way, and it was one of the many reasons Demansk treasured her. She simply returned her eyes to the infant suckling at her breast, and resumed humming her little tune.

Tune?Demansk had to suppress a laugh. It was a medley, actually. A ridiculous pastiche of three songs: an Emerald hymn, usually sung at religious festivals; a semi-obscene ballad popular among the seamen and pirates of the Western Isles; and one of the marching songs of the Vanbert legions.

He began to stride into the patio, but was immediately forced to slow down and concentrate on where he put his feet. A good half of the patio's worn flagstones were overgrown by a medley of ground-covering plants even more exuberantly jumbled together than the "tune" his daughter was humming. Aggressive vinca warred with carpet bugle; red phlox with yet another variety of sedum. In the shadier spots, silver beacon valiantly held its own.

In truth, the plants were all hardyЧall the plants in Helga's part of the garden wereЧand could have withstood his sandaled passage easily enough. But Demansk took a subtle pleasure in avoiding destruction, as he marched toward it.

"You don't have to be so prissy, Father," Helga murmured, smiling faintly. "They'll survive."

For a moment, Demansk felt his facial muscles struggling between a scowl and a smile.

As usual, the smile won.

"In the good old days," he muttered, "girls wouldn't have dreamed of being so disrespectful to their fathers. Who"Чhis voice grew sternЧ"ruled their families with a rod of iron."

Helga's own smile widened. "Oh, please. In the 'good old days,' our illustrious forefathers were illiterate pig farmers. Standing on a dirt floor under a thatch roof, clad in rags, piglets nosing their bare feetЧpissing on them, often enoughЧand bellowing their patriarchal majesty to a huddle of wrinkled women and filthy children. What I never understood is where they got the rod of iron in the first place." Slyly, looking up at her father under lowered eyelids: "Must have stolen it, since the beggars were certainly too poor to buy it."

Demansk grinned. " 'Stole it'? Well, I suppose. 'Plundered it' would be more accurate."

He lowered himself onto the bench next to her and added: "Say whatever else you will about those illiterate pig farmers, they were the toughest beggars the world's ever seen."

"True enough," she admitted. "Although you don't have to be so smug about it."

"And why not?" he shrugged. "Would anyone else have done a better job of ruling the world? Would you have preferred the pirates of the Isles, or the endlessly bickering Emeralds? Or the barbarians of the south?"

His daughter made no riposte. In truth, she had no disagreement with him on the subject, and they both knew it.

Demansk's gaze fell on his grandson's face. The boy had done with suckling, now, and his eyes were studying his grandfather in the vaguely unfocused and wondering way of infants.

Bright blue eyes, quite unlike the green eyes Demansk shared with his daughterЧmuch less the brown eyes which were normal for those of Vanbert stock. And already the fuzz on the infant's head showed signs of the corn-gold splendor it would become.

Demansk cleared his throat. "Speaking of Emeraldsа.а.а.а There doesn't seem to be much doubt who sired him."

Helga snorted softly. "There is no doubt at all , Father."

When her green eyes came up again, they came level and even. No lowered lids, now; not even a pretense of daughterly modesty or demureness.

"There have been only three men who have had carnal knowledge of me. Counting, as the first of those, the pack of pirates who gang-raped me after I was kidnapped." The shrug which rippled her muscular shoulders would have awed the demigod who, legend had it, held up the world. A titan, dismissing flies. "I know neither their names nor do I remember their faces. Nor do I care."

Her right hand, as well shaped and sinewy as her shoulders, caressed her baby's cheek. "Then there was the Director of Vase, into whose hareem I was sold by the pirates and remained for a year. A fat old man, who managed to get an erectionЧso to speakЧexactly twice on the occasions he summoned me." Another snort, this one derisive. "And then, I'm quite certain, faked an orgasm after a minute or so, once he felt he'd maintained his manly reputation."

Despite himself, Demansk couldn't quite suppress a chuckle. Helga's lips twitched wryly in response. And, for a moment, Demansk was as awed by that little smile as the demi-god would have been at the shrug.

No woman he had ever knownЧno man he had ever knownЧcould match his daughter's calm acceptance of life and its woes. It was not that she was blind, or stupid, or naяve. Simply that she had the strength to regiment horror and misery, and turn them to her own purposes instead of being broken by them.