"Joan D. Vinge & Vernor Vinge - The Peddler's Apprentice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Joan D)

polished floor.

From the parapet of his castle he could survey a wide stretch of his domain,
the rich, utterly flat farmlands of the hundred-mile-wide valleyтАФthe lands the South
and West were hungry for. The fields were dark now with turned earth, ready for the
spring planting; it was no time to be calling up an army. He was sure his enemies
were aware of that. The day was exceptionally clear, and at the eastern reaches of his
sight he could make out the grayed purple wall of the mountains: the Highlands, that
held his birthplaceтАФand something more important to him now.

The dry wind ruffled his hair as he looked back across thirty years; his
sunburned hands tightened on the seamless, ancient green-blackness of the parapet.
тАЬDamn you, Mr. Jagged,тАЭ he said to the wind. тАЬWhereтАЩs your magic when I need
it!тАЭ

****

The peddler came to Darkwood Corners from the east, on Wim BuckryтАЩs
seventeenth birthday. It was early summer, and Wim could still see sun flashing on
snow up the pine-wooded hill that towered above the Corners; the snowpack in the
higher hills was melting at last, sluicing down gullies that stood dry through most of
the year, changing Littlebig Creek into a cold, singing torrent tearing at the earth
below the cabins on the north side of the road. Even a week ago the East Pass had
lain under more than thirty feet of snow.

Something like silence came over the townspeople as they saw the peddler
dragging his cart down the east road toward the Corners. His wagon was nearly ten
feet tall and fifteen long, with carved, brightly painted wooden sides that bent sharply
out over the wheels to meet a gabled roof. Wim gaped in wonder as he saw those
wheels, spindly as willow wood yet over five feet across. Under the cartтАЩs weight
they sank half a foot and more into the mud of the road, but cut through the mud
without resistance, without leaving a rut.

Even so, the peddler was bent nearly double with the effort of pulling his load.
The fellow was short and heavy, with skin a good deal darker than Wim had ever
seen. His pointed black beard jutted at a determined angle as he staggered along the
rutted track, up to his ankles in mud. Above his calves the tooled leather of his
leggings gleamed black and clean. Sev-eral scrofulous dogs nosed warily around him
as he plodded down the center of the road; he ignored them as he ignored the staring
townsfolk.

Wim shoved his empty mug back at Ounze Rumpster, sitting nearest the
tavern door. тАЬMore,тАЭ he said. Ounze swore, got up from the steps, and disappeared
into the tavern.

WimтАЩs attention never left the peddler for an instant. As the dark man reached
the widening in the road at the center of town, he pulled his wagon into the muddy
morass where the Widow HenleyтАЩs house had stood until the Littlebig Creek
dragged it to destruction. The stranger had everyoneтАЩs atten-tion now. Even the
townтАЩs smith had left his fire, and stood in his doorway gazing down the street at the