"ab Hugh, Dafydd - Jiana 02 - Warriorwards" - читать интересную книгу автора (ab Hugh Dafydd)

Jiana rolled her head to die side, watching the tea-master.
He began to set out the six teapots that the Pog requested. The rope went slack as the grinning master sergeant and his five men passed under the still-open canvas flap. They wore the red shirts of the Waterfall spearsmen, and the red and black badges of Golonel Gosuss, brother-in-law of Prince Alanai, who still sat on the throne of Bay Bay, in a legal sense.
Too many voices, now that the singer had quit. He glared at the spearsmen as they entered, a venomous look shielded only by the darkness of the Pregnant Bull.
Jiana too studied each face as it passed through the light from the doorway. She was curious whether she knew any of them from her own days in the army, though she had been a horseman and never fought under Gosuss.
"Craven bastards and bloody butchers, they are," pronounced the younger, Calem. He raised his voice a bit, not to be seen a coward in the presence of the Newlies with their hated red and black uniforms.
Padrag spoke quietly, not to draw down the familiar wrath.
"Cut down the children, they would. Cut the shoots, wither the briar patch. Bastards. Butchers and bastards, and heathens sure."
When the sixth and last soldier finally stepped in the light, Jiana gagged on the lees of the tea she had just drained, spraying the liquid across the candle-dipper who sat next to her at the bar. He turned around angrily, and seemed to see her for the first time; but she was too busy choking in amazement to worry about having lost the "Bikld Tilda" invisibility spell.
The sixth soldier was taller than she remembered, and he had the beginnings of a scraggily beard. But it was undeniably Dida.
"Oh lord," she moaned aloud, "it's come to rfife? A stick-finger for Colonel Cosuss?"
She watched Dida cross die room, feeling no compulsion to call out to her former student. She shrank into die
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shadows, but could not muster the calmness to sing the spell again.
Didal How long ago had he danced around her, slaying pretend-enemies with his longknife? Now he swaggered and brayed with the rest of the bully-boys. Four turns ago, he blushed when Jiana dropped her clothes. Now he pushed a grimy hand down the bodice of a young girl, as she sat at a table with her boyfriend.
The boyfriend half stood, moving his hand uncertainly towards the knife at his belt; but Dida laughed, a short, ugly sound, and grabbed his own crotch in response.
The lad looked at the six soldiers, and at his terrified date, who cringed from Dida while staring fixedly into her glass. Then he sat down, glaring at Dida in impotent rage. Dida bulled his way to the bar, still braying. The master sergeant followed, gathering the rope as he walked.
Jiana watched Dida swill two cups of tea in rapid succession. She kept her seat and her silence, trusting to his unobservant nature.
This is my punishment for setting him on this path in the first place, toatching the little shit act-up. Four turns back, Jiana had plucked him from a form south of the city. She was twenty-eight then, and Dida was fourteen.
Too young, too ignorant, no blame, says the Tunk, snakeshit... 1 am to blame.
Dida had left her. Kidnapped at first, but in only two weeks he fully joined his captors, Prince Alanai and his men. They raided the City of Sickness, and Dida took soldier's spoils on a young girl there.
Jiana shut her eyes, hoping to block* out the inexorable vision, the sight that her eyes would not let her forget, no matter how her stomach pleaded. Unconsciously, she balled her fist and drew her knuckles savagely along the rough, wooden bar, tearing off the skin and leaving a long, bloody streak.
She did not want to see Dida, Dida bloody, Dida with the knife in his belly and his guts trailing behind him like the rope trailed behind the Pog. Dida the suicide.
Shutting her eyes was no help; without the sight of the
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teahouse, they had free reign to show her the blood again and again, like a conjurer endlessly stuck on the single trick of the Cut and Restored Chicken. She opened her eyes again, watching Dida drink himself as sick as any other soldier.
You were better than thisf you bastard. You owed me more than this, you ingrate serpent!
But she could not shake the feeling that she was to blame. After all, she had undertaken his "illumination" voluntarily . . . no one forced her; no one asked her.
I botched you. Go away, please lord by the Nameless Serpentine, don't let him stay here to remind me of my failure!
She felt a tear roll down her cheek. She had not wept in four turns. She had not seen Dida in that time, either.
Jiana pressed her lips tight together, trying to hold back the rising lump in her throat. It was a battle lost. She kept the tears quiet. She wanted neither company nor sympathy.
She need not have worried, not in Bay Bay.
How many people get the chances you got? she demanded, not aloud. You got a chance to expiate your crime. You got to kitt yourself and start over, you piece of shit! I have to live with my mistakes. So why did you throw away your "heart an unbound page" and become a hard-ass soldier-boy like me? Snakes. I'm drunk. This tea is deadly. Eat turd and kitt yourself, Dida, but do it somewhere where I can't see you.
She kept her foce buried in her arms for a long time, noticing how the teahouse was rocking more than usual in the waves. It spun in the current, around and around, and she wondered whether it had come loose from its moorings.
Meadows of green lie stained with blood, Farmhouses burned and razed; The howl of the hunt and green of the hood, Ashes and snow where the farrow once stood, And the babe-queen stands amazed . . .
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He was at it again, the Briar singer. Jiana looked up, but Dida was still with the boys, and Padrag and Calem sat silent, heads bowed to hide murder in their eyes, hands fondling ale mugs that ought to have been daggers. She looked around the room; a score of young men and not a few women sat in identical postures, looking any direction but at the Eagles.
Jiana swallowed another cupful of tea, and the Squatting Dog fell into thick darkness. For a moment, she felt the rough wood of the table, pressing against her cheek.
At last she woke, her tears dry. The tea was cold anyway, and the room seemed chillier than it should with so many lamps and bodies.
She stole a glance at the bar; Dida and the Eagles were gone, and conversations had resumed around her.
"Good Lord, Calem," whispered Fadrag, "they'll all be dead, b'Gad. Dead by sunup."
There was a long, silent pause in the Pregnant Bull.
"Dead," agreed Calem, a quaver in his voice, "and my own son among them."
"Your lad stands with them?"
"He stands. He is a Briar, God rest his soul."
"Killed by those heartless bastards, may they rot in the lowest hell, and they not even knowing the light of God."
"Still," mused Calem, but fell silent again.
"Another drop?"