The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy: Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, Renegade’s Magic. Robin Hobb

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Despite my words, he scrabbled faintly at the ground, as if he would get up. ‘Bushwhacked me. Four of them. My papers?’

      I looked around. A few feet away, I saw a dark shape on the ground. It proved to be a satchel. Near it I found a muddied book and a handful of trampled papers. I gathered them up by touch and brought them back to him. ‘I have your papers,’ I told him.

      He made no response.

      ‘Lieutenant Tiber?’

      ‘He’s passed out,’ a voice said. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Sergeant Duril would have done more than hit me with a rock if he’d been there. I’d been completely oblivious to the three figures who had walked up on me in the pouring rain.

      ‘Drunk as a beggar,’ said the man behind me and to my left. I turned my head to see him but he took a couple of steps back. I couldn’t make out his face, but his voice was almost familiar. I’d caught a glimpse of his jacket under his coat. He was a cadet. ‘We saw him arrive here. Carriage brought him from town. He staggered this far and passed out.’

      If I hadn’t been kneeling by Tiber, I don’t think I would have made the connection. I was coldly certain of it now. The cadet talking to me was a second-year, Jaris, the one who had ordered me to strip during initiation.

      I said a foolhardy thing. I only realized it when the words were out of my mouth. ‘He said he was ambushed by four men.’

      ‘He talked to you?’ Dismay was clear in the voice of the third man. I didn’t recognize his voice at all. It was shrill with alarm.

      ‘What did he say?’ demanded Cadet Ordo. The pieces of the puzzle were fitting in all around me, and I didn’t like the picture they made. ‘What did he tell you?’ Ordo demanded, coming closer. I don’t think he cared if I recognized him or not.

      ‘Just that. That four men had jumped him.’ My voice shook. I was shivering with cold, but icy fear was also creeping up my spine.

      ‘Well, but he’s drunk! Who could believe a thing he said? Why don’t you run along, Cadet? We’ll get help for him.’

      ‘Caulder’s already gone for help,’ I pointed out. I was almost certain they knew that. ‘He’s the one who sent me here,’ I added more boldly, and then could not decide if that was a wise thing to say or not. I doubted Caulder would give witness against them if they dragged me off, killed me and threw me in the river. In the pouring rain and cold wind, with Tiber dead or unconscious before me, it did not seem such an impossible thing that they might kill me. I wanted so badly to stand up, brush the mud from my knees, and tell them I was going back to my dormitory. Yet if I was not coward enough to leave Tiber there, I was also not brave enough to voice what I suspected. They’d seen him get out of the carriage, noticed he was drunk, and known that in that condition, he was no match for them.

      ‘Go home, Cadet Burvelle,’ Ordo quietly commanded me. ‘We have things under control here.’

      Coincidence saved me from having to decide if I were a man or a coward that night. I heard the rasp of hurrying feet on the walkway. Through the rain and dark I made out the figure of Dr Amicas. He was carrying a lantern and it made a small circle of light around him as he came. Two brawnier men followed him, carrying a stretcher between them. The relief that surged through me weakened my knees, and I felt lucky I wasn’t standing. I waved my arm over my head and called out loudly, ‘Over here! Cadet Lieutenant Tiber is hurt.’

      ‘We think he got beat up in town and then came home here in a carriage and passed out. He’s drunk.’ All of this was volunteered by Cadet Ordo. I expected to hear the others confirm it, but when I looked around, they were gone.

      ‘Out of the way, boy!’ Dr Amicas commanded me. I moved to one side, and he set his lantern on the ground beside Tiber. ‘This is bad,’ he said at first sight of Tiber’s face. The doctor was still puffing from his trot here. I turned aside, thinking I might be sick. A blow from something had split his scalp and it was sagging open over his ear. ‘Did he speak to you?’

      ‘He was unconscious when we found him,’ Ordo volunteered quickly.

      The doctor was not a dull-witted man. ‘I thought you said he came here in a carriage. Surely the driver didn’t carry an unconscious cadet over here and dump him before they left?’ Hard cold scepticism was in his voice. It made me brave enough to speak.

      ‘He talked to me a little bit, when I first got here. When we were taking Gord back to Carneston House, Caulder ran past us. He said someone was hurt. So I came here, thinking I might be able to help. Tiber was conscious when I got here. He said he wasn’t drunk. And that four men had attacked him. And he asked me to be sure his papers were safe.’

      The doctor lowered his face, sniffed at Tiber suspiciously, and then drew back. ‘Well, he certainly doesn’t smell sober. But drinking doesn’t lay a man’s scalp open either. And he didn’t get this sort of mud on himself in town. He’s damn lucky not to be dead after a blow to the head like that. Load him up on the stretcher and let’s get him back to the infirmary.’

      The doctor stood and held the lantern for the two orderlies who carefully edged Tiber onto the stretcher. In the lantern’s feeble light, the doctor looked older than he had in the infirmary. The lines in his face seemed deeper and his eyes were flat.

      ‘He might have got muddy here after he fell trying to walk back to his dormitory,’ Ordo suddenly volunteered. We all turned to look at him. The reasoning sounded laborious to me, and the doctor must have agreed, for he suddenly snapped at him, ‘You’ll come with us. I want you to write down everything you saw and sign it. Burvelle, you go back to your dormitory. And Caulder! Get yourself home this instant. I don’t want to see you again tonight.’

      Caulder had been holding back at the edge of the circle of light, staring at Tiber with an expression of both fascination and horror. At the doctor’s words, he startled, and then scampered off into the night. I stooped and picked up Tiber’s satchel and papers.

      ‘Give those to me,’ the doctor commanded me brusquely, and I passed them over to him.

      Dr Amicas’s path led in the same direction as mine, so I walked on the other side of the stretcher from him. The swaying light of the lantern made the shadows travel over Tiber’s face, distorting his features. He was very pale.

      I left the miserable cavalcade at the walkway to Carneston House. The windows in the upper floors were all dark, but a lantern still burned by the door. When I went inside, I took the last of my courage and reported to Sergeant Rufet. He stared at me as I stammered out my excuse for coming in after lights-out. I thought he would take me to task over it, but he only nodded and said, ‘Your friend said you’d run off to see about someone who was hurt. Next time, come here first and report it to me. I could have sent some of the older cadets with you.’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ I said wearily. I turned to go.

      ‘It was Cadet Lieutenant Tiber, you said.’

      I turned back. ‘Yes, sir. He’d been beaten up pretty badly. He was drunk. So I don’t think he put up much of a fight.’

      Sergeant Rufet knit his brows at me. ‘Drunk? Not Tiber. That boy doesn’t drink. Somebody’s lying.’ And then, as if he suddenly realized what he had said, the sergeant snapped his jaws shut. ‘Go to bed, Cadet. Quietly,’ he told me an instant later. I went.

      I СКАЧАТЬ