Half a War. Джо Аберкромби

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       No Peace

      ‘When will they be here?’

      Father Yarvi sat slumped against a tree with his legs crossed and an ancient-looking book propped on his knees. He might almost have seemed asleep had his eyes not been flickering over the writing beneath heavy lids. ‘I am a minister, Koll,’ he murmured, ‘not a seer.’

      Koll frowned up at the offerings about the glade. Headless birds and drained jars of ale and bundles of bones swinging on twine. A dog, a cow, four sheep, all dangling head-down from rune-carved branches, flies busy at their slit throats.

      There was a man too. A thrall, by the chafe marks on his neck, a ring of runes written clumsily on his back, his knuckles brushing the bloody ground. A fine sacrifice to He Who Sprouts the Seed from some rich woman eager for a child.

      Koll didn’t much care for holy places. They made him feel he was being watched. He liked to think he was an honest fellow, but everyone has their secrets. Everyone has their doubts.

      ‘What’s the book?’ he asked.

      ‘A treatise on elf-relics written two hundred years ago by Sister Slodd of Reerskoft.’

      ‘More forbidden knowledge, eh?’

      ‘From a time when the Ministry was fixed on gathering wisdom, rather than suppressing it.’

      ‘Only what is known can be controlled,’ muttered Koll.

      ‘And all knowledge, like all power, can be dangerous in the wrong hands. It is the use it is put to that counts.’ And Father Yarvi licked the tip of the one twisted finger on his withered left hand and used it to turn the page.

      Koll frowned off into the still forest. ‘Did we have to come so early?’

      ‘The battle is usually won by the side that gets there first.’

      ‘I thought we came to talk peace?’

      ‘Talk of peace is the minister’s battlefield.’

      Koll gave a sigh that made his lips flap. He perched himself on a stump at the edge of the clearing, a cautious distance from any of the offerings, slipped out his knife and the chunk of ash-wood he’d already roughly shaped. She Who Strikes the Anvil, hammer high. A gift for Rin, when he got back to Thorlby. If he got back, rather than ending up dangling from a tree in this glade himself. He flapped his lips again.

      ‘The gods have given you many gifts,’ murmured Father Yarvi, without looking up from his book. ‘Deft hands and sharp wits. A lovely shock of sandy hair. A slightly over-ready sense of humour. But do you wish to be a great minister, and stand at the shoulder of kings?’

      Koll swallowed. ‘You know I do, Father Yarvi. More than anything.’

      ‘Then you have many things to learn, and the first is patience. Focus your moth of a mind and one day you could change the world, just as your mother wanted you to.’

      Koll jerked at the thong around his neck, felt the weights strung on it click together under his shirt. The weights his mother Safrit used to wear as a storekeeper, trusted to measure fairly. Be brave, Koll. Be the best man you can be.

      ‘Gods, I still miss her,’ he muttered.

      ‘So do I. Now still yourself, and attend to what I do.’

      Koll let the weights drop. ‘My eyes are rooted to you, Father Yarvi.’

      ‘Close them.’ The minister snapped his book shut and stood, brushing the dead leaves from the back of his coat. ‘And listen.’

      Footsteps, coming towards them through the forest. Koll slipped the carving away but kept the knife out, point up his sleeve. Well-chosen words will solve most problems but, in Koll’s experience, well-sharpened steel was a fine thing for tackling the others.

      A woman stepped from the trees, dressed in minister’s black. Her fire-red hair was shaved at the sides, runes tattooed into the skin around her ears, the rest combed with fat into a spiky fin. Her face was hard, made harder yet by the muscles bunching as she chewed on dreamer’s bark, lips blotchy at the edges with the purple stain of it.

      ‘You are early, Mother Adwyn.’

      ‘Not as early as you, Father Yarvi.’

      ‘Mother Gundring always told me it was poor manners to come second to a meeting.’

      ‘I hope you will forgive my rudeness, then.’

      ‘That depends on the words you bring from Grandmother Wexen.’

      Mother Adwyn raised her chin. ‘Your master, King Uthil, and his ally, Grom-gil-Gorm, have broken their oaths to the High King. They have slapped aside his hand of friendship and drawn their swords against him.’

      ‘His hand of friendship weighed heavily upon us,’ said Yarvi. ‘Two years since we shook it off we find we all breathe easier. Two years, and the High King has taken no towns, has won no battles—’

      ‘And what battles have Uthil and Gorm fought? Unless you count the ones they fight daily against each other?’ Adwyn spat juice out of the corner of her mouth and Koll fiddled uneasily at a loose thread on his sleeve. She struck close to the mark with that. ‘You have enjoyed good luck, Father Yarvi, for the High King’s eye has been on this rebellion in the Lowlands. A rebellion I hear you had a hand in raising.’

      Yarvi blinked, all innocence. ‘Can I make men rise up hundreds of miles away? Am I a magician?’

      ‘Some say you are, but magic, or luck, or deep-cunning will change nothing now. The rebellion is crushed. Bright Yilling duelled Hokon’s three sons and one by one he cut them down. His sword-work is without equal.’

      Father Yarvi peered at СКАЧАТЬ