"Janny Wurts - The Master of Whitestorm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wurts Janny)

I. The Galleys of Mhurga



Jostled from sleep by the bang of a fist against the beechwood oar which pillowed his head, Haldeth
started upright, muscles tensed reflexively. But the command he expected never came: no guttural shout
followed to trans-form the night into a misery of hardship, rowing against endless ranks of sea swells. By
the dim fall of moonlight through the aft oarports, Haldeth surveyed the lower deck of the galley Nailga.
Every slave remained hunched and still over his loom, but one. The blow which roused him had not arisen
from his Mhurgai masters, but from his own benchmate, in a useless fit of rage.

Annoyed himself, Haldeth forgot tact. "Mind your temper!" he whispered urgently.

The man at his side looked up. Confronted by gray eyes and a face which held no trace of laughter or
com-passion, Haldeth felt his breath catch in his throat. Gooseflesh chilled his skin. Although the air was
tropical and mild, he shivered and glanced aside, reminded of the first night his benchmate had been
dragged on board.

As a battered, soot-streaked captive not yet past his seventeenth summer, that savage look had been
with him then,graven upon young features by the atrocities of the Mhurgai who routinely pillaged and
burned

towns on the shores of lilantyr. But who he was, and what family he had owned before he was chained
for the oar, Haldeth never knew. The boy had grown to man-hood in stony silence.

The Mhurgai called him Darjir, sullen one, for the flat, unflinching glare he returned when anyone
addressed him. No man heard him speak, even through three years of abuse ..on Nallga's lower deck.
Haldeth believed him insane. ~

The y of the Mhurgai drive the strongest mind to madness, Haldeth well knew. Soured by bitter
memories, he shifted a foot cramped by the bite of the galley's floorboards. Even now, he suffered
nightmares of his wife and two daughters; they had been butchered before his eyes the day his own
freedom was lost. Daily he cursed the smith's constitution which bound him to life and health, for other
than hair turned prematurely white, seven years as a galley slave had changed him little. Haldeth envied
Darjir's witlessness. Better to feel nothing than to endure the ache of grief and hatred, help-lessly
chained.

Sleep alone afforded respite. Determined to take full advantage of the hours Nallga would remain at
anchor, Haldeth leaned once more across the oar and settled his head on crossed wrists. Darjir's eyes
followed him rest-lessly, luminous as coins in the moonlight.

"Neth Everlasting!" Haldeth lifted a resentful fist to emphasize his meaning since words were wasted
effort on a man never heard to utter an intelligent sound. "Bother somebody else, will you? I've had
enough."

Darjir flexed callused fingers against the oar. Then he lifted his head and spoke with sudden, startling
clarity. "I'm going to get off this hulk." His tone cut like the wind's edge in winter.

Haldeth gasped. Shocked, he took a momelnt to react.
No man escaped the bench of a Mhurgai galley alive.