Initiate’s Trial: First book of Sword of the Canon. Janny Wurts

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      II. Vagabond

      The last of the hens to be sold from the crate squirmed out of Kerelie’s grasp. The rude creature bolted before her new owner clamped a firm grip on her struggling legs. Lest the customer grumble, or worse, accuse Kerelie as a thieving cheat, the coin just dropped into her cash-box was returned with her regretful apology. No use to pretend that sore need for the paltry half-silver did not matter. The Light’s tithe imposed by Tysan’s high priesthood already claimed the last revenue from the harvest.

      Since Tarens was poking about looking idle, he became saddled with the thankless task to recover the runaway fowl. If the useless bird was too scrawny to lay, she possessed enough spiteful fight to take off as though chased by the fell powers of Darkness. Tarens pursued her cackling flight as she darted length and breadth through the stalls of Kelsing’s packed market. Jostled patrons cursed in his wake. A hand-cart of pumpkins upset. Tarens leaped, skidding, through rolling fruit. He elbowed past the irate ring of gawkers. Plunged headlong into the havoc that disrupted the vested priest of the Light at his booming recital of doctrine, while the hen flapped through the audience to outbursts of laughter that upset all pious solemnity.

      Tarens missed his next pounce.

      Immersed in the impassioned delivery of warnings against the subtle practice of evil, the priest glared daggers down his lofty nose. The hysterical hen back-pedaled, trumpeted in alarm, and scooted beneath the gilt rostrum.

      Tarens tugged his forelock with an endearing shrug and mumbled a shamefaced apology. Then he dropped onto hands and knees in the grass. His frantic snatch under the priest’s white silk hem raised a sneeze on the cloyed reek of incense. Mortified beyond care how much he outraged the temple, the crofter damned the pea-brained wits of loose chickens to reap the fell gale winds of Darkness.

      The fowl he cursed hiked up ragged wings, squawked like a jammed hinge, and indignantly pelted. Her flight skittered into the candleman’s stall, with Tarens blundering under the rails, fringed with tapers hung by the wicks. Repeatedly clubbed about his reddened ears, he ducked clear, blindly sprinting. The bird raced ahead. She jagged shy of a helpful bystander’s snatch. Plunged into the thick stand of trees at the verge, she vanished into the autumn tangles of burdock.

      Tarens swore and ploughed after her, snagging up burrs and dry runners of thorn. If the silly bird thrashed beyond earshot, she would be lost for good. The fact his beset family needed her paltry worth forced him to keep on until dusk made the finicky bird come to roost. Once she tucked her head under her wing for the night, he climbed the tree and snared her barehanded. The shocked fowl emitted a curdling screech. Tarens winced, insulted by a squirt of guano that splattered his hair.

      ‘Fiends rise and take you!’ he snarled, then blasphemed in earnest as the sky opened into a downpour and drenched him.

      Full dark cloaked the market field on his return. He slogged through the trampled mud between the shuttered wood stalls, dismayed to find even the tent merchants packed up and gone. Dripping and forlorn, their family’s rig was the last harnessed wagon tied to the empty hitching rail. The bedraggled hen was furious still. Her beating wings and manic squalls set the huntsman’s kenneled dogs barking behind the town-walls.

      Efflin’s vile mood had not improved. ‘Should wring that bird’s neck before we get nailed with a fine for disturbing the peace.’

      Tarens shrugged. The sluiced rainfall at least spared his sister’s tart fuss over his sopped clothes and slimed hair. Soaked and cold as he, Kerelie hunched with the open crate readied on the lowered tail-board. Efflin sneezed too hard for further complaint through the ruckus as the miffed fowl was caged. Throughout, the relentless drum of the rain pocked the puddles dammed amid the heaped tarp in the wagon-bed.

      The vacated grounds lay felted with mist by the time Tarens clambered aboard. Efflin tugged the knotted reins from the rail, took the bench, and headed the steaming ox homeward.

      Bone weary and shivering, no one had starch enough left for regret that in spring, their market days ended with two little boys curled up like exhausted puppies, soothed asleep by Efflin’s baritone singing. Grief flattened the family spirits too much to lament that the СКАЧАТЬ