• Пожаловаться

David Drake: The Fortress of Glass

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «David Drake: The Fortress of Glass» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. категория: Фэнтези / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

David Drake The Fortress of Glass

The Fortress of Glass: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The Fortress of Glass»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

David Drake: другие книги автора


Кто написал The Fortress of Glass? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

The Fortress of Glass — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The Fortress of Glass», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

He stood now behind the two women like a wall of muscle, his hickory quarterstaff an upright pillar in his right hand. Sharina, still touching Tenoctris with her left hand, put her right in the crook of his elbow. Cashel smiled because he usually smiled, and he smiled wider because Sharina touched him. It would've embarrassed him to take her hand in public, but nobody seeing the two of them together could doubt that they loved one another.

Sailors from the barge had thrown lines from bow and stern aboard theShepherd; crewmen snubbed them to the outrigger that carried three of the flagship's five oar-banks. The sailing master was blasting the barge captain with remarkable curses, though, at the notion that the smaller vessel would be allowed to lie hull to hull where it'd scrape the flagship's paint. The barge captain swore back.

"We've been three months since the ships were overhauled in Carcosa," Sharina said, frowning. "I don't see that a few more scrapes are going to be noticed."

Sailors tended to carry out their business as though the officials travelling as passengers didn't exist. She and Garric had been taught to keep their affairs-the inn's affairs-secret from the guests. This slanging match the officers of the two ships offended Sharina's sense of propriety, though the curses themselves did not.

"I think what he's saying is that we're fine people from the palace in Valles," said Cashel, quietly but with something solid in his tone that wouldn't have been there if he were better satisfied with the situation. "And they're just nobodies from the sticks. Only we're not, not all of us; and I guess that fellow'd have been as quick to callme a nobody back before Garric got to be prince and it all changed."

"Not to your face, Cashel," Sharina said-and kissed him, surprising herself almost as much as she did her fiance. It was the perfect way to break his mood; Cashel's face went the color of mahogany as he blushed under the deep tan. They were in the shelter of the jib boom, though, and everybody else was looking toward the stern where the delegation was swaying aboard on a rope ladder. Nobody was likely to have noticed.

"Do we know why these people are meeting us at sea?" Tenoctris said.

Sharina jumped. The older woman had been so thoroughly lost in her own thoughts that Sharina'd forgotten her presence.

"Ah, no," she said. "We could join them in the stern if you'd like, though. They're certainly an official delegation, so I guess it's our duty to be there."

"Right," said Cashel, turning and starting down the walkway stretching the length of the ship between the gratings over the rowers. There wasn't much room, but the sailors on deck would get out of his way though they might be so busy they'd ignore the women.

Sharina motioned Tenoctris ahead of her and brought up the rear. She didn't have Cashel's bulk, but her tall, slender body was muscular and she had reflexes gained from waiting tables in rooms crowded with men.

"They may have nothing to do with what I feel building around us," Tenoctris said quietly, perhaps speaking to herself as much as to her younger companions. "But their meeting us at sea is unusual, and the way the forces are building isvery unusual; almost unique in my experience."

"'Almostunique'" Sharina said, delicately emphasizing the qualifier.

"Yes," said the wizard. "I felt something like this in the moments before similar I wwas ripped out of my time and the island of Yole sank into the depths of the sea."


***

One of Garric's guards gave his spear to a comrade so that he had a hand free to reach over the railing to the twelve-year-old climbing the swaying ladder ahead of five adults. "Here you go, lad," he said.

"Have a care, my man!" cried the puffy looking bald fellow immediately behind the boy. "This is Prince Protas, the ruler of our island!"

"All the more reason not to let him fall into the water, then," said Garric, stepping forward. "Since I'm told that right around here it's as deep as the Inner Sea gets."

He took the boy's right hand while the soldier gripped him under the left shoulder, and together they lifted him aboard. Protas tucked his legs under him so that his toes didn't touch the rail. Though he didn't speak, he bowed politely to Garric and dipped his head to the soldier as well, then slipped forward to get as much out of the way as was possible on the warship's deck.

The plump official reached the railing. Garric nodded a guard forward to help him but pointedly didn't offer a hand himself.

"That would be Lord Martous," Liane whispered in his left ear. "Protas is King Cervoran's son, but Cervoran was ruler as of my latest information."

Among Liane's other duties, she was Garric's spymaster; or rather she was a spymaster who kept Garric informed of events from all over the Isles, whether or not they took place on islands which had returned to royal control. Her father had been a far-travelled merchant. Liane of her own volition-Garric wouldn't have known what to ask her to do-had turned his network of business connections into a full-fledged intelligence service. It'd benefited the kingdom more than another ten regiments for the army could've done.

Lord Martous had an unhappy expression as he struggled aboard in the soldier's grasp. Garric shared his mind with the spirit of King Carus, his ancient ancestor and the last ruler of the Old Kingdom. Now the image of Carus grinned and said, "If I know the type, he looks unhappy most of the time he's awake. Being manhandled over the railing just gives him a better reason than usual."

Martous straightened his clothing with quick pats of his hands while he waited for the remainder of the delegation to climb onto the deck, aides or servants from their simpler dress. One of them carried a bundle wrapped in red velvet.

The delegates wore baggy woolen trousers and blouses, felt caps, and slippers whose toes turned up in points. Martous and Protas had long triangular gares of cloth-of-gold appliqued vertically on their sleeves and trouser legs; those of the other men were plain. The wool was bleached white, but it was clear that First Atara's society didn't set great store on flamboyant personal decoration.

Garric preferred simplicity to the styles of the great cities of the kingdom, Valles and Erdin on Sandrakkan or even Carcosa which now was merely the capital of the unimportant island of Haft. It'd been the royal capital during the Old Kingdom, and it remained a pretentious place despite its glory being a thousand years in the past.

Garric grinned at Lord Martous: a balding little fellow, a homely man from a rustic place who was incensed that he and the boy on whom his status depended weren't being treated with greater deference. That implied that pretentiousness was one of the strongest human impulses.

"Come along, Basto, come along," called Lord Martous to the aide struggling with the bundle. Then on a rising note, "No, don't you-"

The latter comment was to Lord Attaper, the commander of the Blood Eagles and a man to whom Garric's safety was more important than it was to Garric himself. Attaper, a stocky, powerful man in his forties, ignored the protest just as he ignored all other attempts to tell him how to do his job. He plucked the package from the aide's hands and unwrapped it while the aide came aboard and Martous spluttered in frustration.

"I'm sorry you had to scramble up like a monkey, Prince Protas," Garric said, smiling at the boy to put him at his ease. Protas was obviously nervous and uncertain, afraid to say or do the wrong thing in what he knew were important circumstances. "I'd expected to meet you-and your father, of course-on land in a few hours."

"King Cervoran is dead, sir," Protas said with careful formality. He forced himself to look straight at Garric as he spoke, but then he swallowed hard.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The Fortress of Glass»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The Fortress of Glass» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


David Drake: A Grand Tour
A Grand Tour
David Drake
David Drake: Killer
Killer
David Drake
David Drake: Conqueror
Conqueror
David Drake
David Drake: Tyrant
Tyrant
David Drake
David Drake: Balefires
Balefires
David Drake
David Drake: The Heretic
The Heretic
David Drake
Отзывы о книге «The Fortress of Glass»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The Fortress of Glass» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.