"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 3 - The Unwilling Warlord" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

considerably, adding to his vocabulary and giving him practice in
pronunciation and sentence construction.
Semma was a quiet little kingdom, almost all of it occupied by peasants
on small family farms, scraping a living out of the sandy soil by growing
oranges, lemons, dates, figs, olives, and corn, or by raising sheep, or goats,
or cattle. At one time some peasants had grown spices for export, but Semma
had lost its spice trade long ago, when Ophkar had temporarily cut off all the
routes to the sea and the markets had found other, more reliable sources. The
soldiers knew of no mines, or towns, or any sort of manufacture or trade.
In the center of the kingdom stood Semma Castle, with a large village
clustered around it, the closest thing to a town or city that the kingdom
could boast. The castle itself was home to something over a hundred nobles.
Sterren had balked initially at believing that, but both Dogal and Alder had
insisted it was the truth. Sterren could imagine a hundred people willingly
jammed into a single building readily enough, since he had seen the crowded
tenements of his native city, but he could not imagine a hundred people living
like that who called themselves nobles.
Back home in Ethshar, Azrad VII surely had a hundred or more people
living in his palace, but only a few could call themselves nobles; most were
servants and courtiers and bureaucrats.
Alder had noticed his disbelief and had explained, "Well, that's counting
the kids, and besides, a lot of them are lesser nobility, and it's a big
castle. You'll see."
Sterren considered that, and Lady Kalira took this opportunity to present
him with a salve for his developing saddlesores.
"It's always a good idea to bring a healing salve when traveling," she
said, "though this wasn't exactly the use I had in mind."
Sterren accepted it gratefully and crawled away from the campfire
somewhat in pursuit of privacy. Lady Kalira discreetly turned away, and the
Ethsharite slid down his breeches and applied the ointment liberally.
 That done, he rejoined the others. He had just begun to inquire about the
army he was supposed to command when Lady Kalira announced it was time to shut
up and sleep.
Sterren obliged, leaving military matters for the morning.


CHAPTER 4

They spotted the castle's central tower by midmorning of the third day,
scarcely an hour after they had buried the ashes of their breakfast fire and
set out again. Sterren had to admit that it looked like a big castle, as Alder
had said.
At that point they had just begun to pass farms, rather than open plain,
compact yellow houses surrounded by small stands of fruit trees, patches of
tall corn, and miscellaneous livestock grazing the native grass down to
stubble. The various inhabitants of these establishments, intent on their own
concerns of herding or cultivation or hauling water, invariably ignored the
travelers.
The plain was no longer quite so smooth and flat as it had been for most
of the journey; the ground they traversed had acquired something of a roll,