The Serpentwar Saga: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Raymond E. Feist

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ led them through a series of exercises designed to help them identify the sources of common problems and how to recognize the flow of energies in another’s body. At the midday meal the men were joking about this laying hands on one another, but they were also obviously impressed at the ability of this simple act to relieve aches and reduce swelling and generally make them feel better.

      After lunch, Erik and Roo were sent aloft, relieving sailors on the day watch so they could eat. Securing a sail that the Captain had ordered reefed as the wind freshened, Roo said, ‘What do you think of all that?’

      Erik said, ‘What Nakor said: it’s a useful tool. I don’t care a fig for what Sho Pi says about its being a mystic thing. It works; I’ll use it.’ With a near-wistful note in his voice, he added, ‘I wish I had known about it when I was tending Greylock’s mare. It would have made her come back faster, I think.’

      Roo said, ‘I think anything we know that can keep us healthy is good.’

      Erik nodded. There was a grim reluctance among the men to consider the eventual end of their journey. After Calis had announced his intention to take them to join this invading host, he had briefly outlined their mission.

      They would land a small party on a beach below a cliff where ships did not normally pass. The thirty-six prisoners and fifty-eight survivors of the last campaign, with Foster, de Loungville, Nakor, and Calis, would climb this cliff face. Once atop the plateau, they would travel overland to meet some allies of Calis’s, then move to intercept the invaders at a city called Khaipur. Their mission was to discover what weakness, if any, existed in this host, and Calis and Nakor would be the ones likely to understand what that would be. But when it was discovered what that weakness might be, then it was every man’s duty to return to the City of the Serpent River with the information, to get back to Trenchard’s Revenge, and get the critical intelligence back to Prince Nicholas.

      If they could contrive a way to balk the onslaught before the invaders could muster a host big enough to cross the waters and assault the Kingdom, all the better. But Calis drove home again and again the risk that hung over everyone. Erik remembered his last words on the subject: ‘No one will escape. This plague of invasion is but the first part of the destruction. Dark magic beyond your ability to comprehend will be unleashed in the end, and should you hide in the deepest cave in the farthest mountains of the Northlands, or in the remotest island on some distant sea, you will die. If we do not stop this host, we all will die.’ He had looked from man to man. ‘That is the only choice, win or die.’

      Now Erik understood why Robert de Loungville had needed ‘desperate men,’ because for all intents and purposes they were about to stick their neck back in noose. Erik absently fingered the one he still wore.

      ‘Mercy!’ said Roo, bringing Erik out of his revery.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Speak of a demon and he appears! Isn’t that Owen Greylock’s silver scalp I see over there on the foredeck of the Ranger?’

      Erik looked hard and saw the tiny figure on the nearby ship. ‘It could be. About the right size, and the hair has that silver streaking through it.’

      ‘I wonder why we didn’t see him at the beach?’

      Erik finished off tying a line. ‘Maybe he didn’t come ashore. Maybe he already knows the tasks at hand.’

      Roo nodded. ‘In all of this there are still some things I don’t understand. Who was this Miranda woman, anyway? Every man I mention her to has met her, sometimes under different names. And Greylock was your friend, maybe, but if he’s on that ship, did he have something to do with our being captured?’

      Erik shrugged. ‘If that is Greylock, we’ll find out when we get where we’re going. As for the rest, who cares? We’re here, and we have a job to do. Thinking about why isn’t going to change that.’

      Roo looked exasperated. ‘You have too accepting a nature, my friend. When this is all done, if we survive, I plan on getting rich. There’s a merchant in Krondor with a homely daughter who he wants to marry off. I may be just the lad for her.’

      Erik laughed. ‘You can be ambitious for both of us, Roo.’

      They continued to work, and when Erik glanced over at the Ranger, the figure who might have been Owen was gone.

      Weeks passed. They sailed through the Straits of Darkness without mishap, though the weather was difficult. For the first time Erik felt what it was like to be at risk aboard ship, hanging from rigging as weather buffeted him. The old hands joked that this was a mild passage for the time of year in the Straits, and wove stories of impossible conditions, with mile-high funnel clouds and waves the size of castles.

      It took three days, and when they had passed through, Erik had nearly collapsed on his bunk, as had his companions. The experienced sailors could sleep through the storm on their off watch, but the former prisoners weren’t that blasé about it.

      As life aboard the ship became more routine, the relationships between the men evolved. They would talk for days about the grim purpose behind their mission, then more days would go by without comment. Speculation would lead to dispute, followed by silent acknowledgment that each man, in his own way, was afraid.

      Those former soldiers who came over from the Ranger to train with the prisoners were just as likely to give long narratives about the previous venture south as they were to remain silent. It depended upon the man and his mood.

      Erik did discover one thing: Calis was nothing human, if the older soldiers were to be believed. Far more telling than Jadow’s and Jerome’s tales of his prodigious strength was one old soldier, a former corporal at Carse, who said that he had first met Calis twenty-four years previously, when the corporal had been a raw recruit, and Calis hadn’t aged a day since.

      Roo was learning to curb his temper, if not entirely master it. He had gotten into several arguments, but only one had come to blows, and that had quickly been ended by Jerome Handy’s picking Roo up, carrying him up on deck, and threatening to drop him over the side. The crew laughed as Roo dangled over the water with Jerome gripping his ankles.

      Roo had been more embarrassed than angered by the incident, and when Erik had spoken to him about it afterward, he shrugged it off. He said something that had stuck with Erik ever since. He looked his boyhood friend in the eye and said, ‘Whatever happens, I have been afraid, Erik. I cried like a baby and peed in my pants when they took us to the gallows. After that, what is there left to be afraid of?’

      Erik enjoyed the sea, but he didn’t think he could live the sailor’s life. He longed for his forge and horses to tend. He knew that if he survived the coming battles, that would be his choice: a forge and maybe, someday, a wife and children.

      He thought about Rosalyn and his mother, Milo and Ravensburg. He wondered how they were doing, and if they knew he was alive. Manfred might have mentioned it to a guard, who might have told someone in town. But there was certainly no one who cared enough about him or his family to ensure that his mother or Rosalyn knew. He had thoughts of Rosalyn, and found them strangely neutral. He loved her, but when he imagined a wife and children, Rosalyn wasn’t there. No one was.

      Roo had already made up his mind he would return to Krondor and marry Helmut Grindle’s homely daughter. Every time he said that, Erik laughed.

      As the days wore on, the men became more proficient in every aspect of their training. The stories of the surviving men from the last mission and their example, their own grim determination СКАЧАТЬ