The Quest of Kadji
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Chronicles of Kylix #1
- Год: 1973
- Язык: английский
- Год: Five Star Paperback
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Quest of Kadji». Краткое содержание книги:
He rode in, finding narrow cobbled streets and ramshackle houses and sheds dominated by huge warehouses of the merchant lords. At length he found an inn. And he found also a girl.
vi. The Perushka
KADJI HAD rented a place in the stables of the inn for his pony and was striding the streets bound for the nearest bazaar when he saw her.
She was gloriously fair, slim and strong and no older than he, if as old. Her hair was a banner of dark red flame and her eyes, large and bold and startling in her clear tanned face, were smoky amber flaked with fiery gold. She had proud young breasts and a free-swinging stride that reminded him of the wild Kozanga girls; like them, she wore high boots and tight leggings which displayed the slim clean lines of her long legs.
It puzzled him as to what she might be. No daughter of the merchant lords or princely artisans of Nabdoor would walk alone in the streets, for the townsmen were fiercely protective of their women and kept them behind walls; when, as seldom chanced, they were permitted abroad in the two town streets, they went heavily veiled and in giggling groups guarded by eunuchs. Not so, the flamehaired girl with eyes of smoky gold. She walked as freely as if she had no master—and no father, either. He was baffled, intrigued, and also—attracted.
While he shopped at the booths of the bazaar, selecting dried meats and preserved fruits and black bread and an oiled sack of red wine for his long ride to the north, he eyed her. She might be, he guessed, a Perushka—a gypsy—for she wore the loose flapping aftar of that people, and the gaudy kerchief about her brows, and the gold bangles at earlobe and throat and wrist. But she did not have the roguish swagger, the bold flirtatious eye, the flaunting walk, which marked the Perushka women.
And there was one thing else.
By her side paced a gigantic plains-wolf, grey as smoke, with eyes of lambent golden fire. The bazaar-folk gave it and its mistress a wide berth, he noticed, and indeed it was a strange thing, and almost unheard of, for the wolf was as tame as a great dog. And yet it was purebred plains-wolf, untainted in blood with town-dog strain, for often had Kadji seen the terrible wolf-packs of the Great Plains, and had fought them betimes, when harsh winter made them fierce mankillers.
She was an enigma, and as he went to sleep that night in a cramped loft atop the inn, the mystery of the girl and the beauty of her filled his thoughts and floated in his dreams.
WHEN HE rose with dawn from his narrow pallet, it was to shiver in the cold raw breeze. The harsh bleak light of morning flooded the little loft and through the one small window, shielded with a carven uthrab screen of pierced wood, he could see the grey light on stucco domes and low-roofed houses, and a clouded wintry sky beyond to the World’s Edge.
He broke his morning fast in the tavern of the inn, before a roaring scarlet fire, while a cheerful inn-girl with red cheeks and thick braids and a very dirty apron clattered pots and pans noisily. When he went to the stables to say good morning to Haral, his boots crunched on frozen mud crusted with a very light fall of snow. The cold season was upon the world, and henceforth the going would be hard and difficult.
The black pony was happy to see him, stamped restively and nudged him with its velvet nose while he gentled the steed with soft loving words and wove his fingers through its long unshorn mane. Today he must finish the last of his purchases and depart. He thought of the amber-eyed Perushka girl with her flaming hair: soon she would only be a fading memory to him, a bright-haired wraith. For once he left the streets of Nabdoor-town behind in his travels, he would never see her again.
He growled at himself, as a boy wilclass="underline" why all this accursed mooning over a pretty girl glimpsed in passing amid the streets of this nameless and unimportant little, town? He was glooming over her like a love-struck poet, but he was no poet but a warrior; a man, and on a mighty mission of honor and vengeance! He had no time to dream about pretty girls; he should be meditating on blood and fire and steel… .
Yet somehow he could not drive her from his mind. And as he strode about the snowy streets, buying provisions for his pony, his thoughts returned again and again to the slim, proud, lovely girl with eyes of smoky amber and hair like a scarlet banner tossed on fiery winds, and on the great wolf that went ever at her side.
Almost he thought to see her again today, but no, she was nowhere to be seen, and Kadji did not care to ask too many questions of the boothkeepers in the bazaar. For here and there about the square strode burly knights of the Rashemba in their glittering longshirts of chain mail, horned helmets of sparkling steel on their Straw-colored hair, their heavy red faces impassive, and cold grey eyes roving everywhere, alert and suspicious. To ask, questions might mean to draw attention to himself; therefore Kadji asked no one about the flame-haired girl.
He kept his month shut and his face blankly incurious. He bought his goods with a minimum of talking, and he kept as far away from the towering horned knights as he could, without seeming to do so. And under his fringed kuruz the God-Axe, the Axe of Thom-Ra, lay bound against his beating heart. The sacred “Fortune” of the Chayyim Kozanga Nomads rode with him … and the razory edge of the holy steel thirsted to drink deep of the vile blood of the dog-knights of Rashemba,
vii. The Road North
ERE THE sun star Kylix had ascended to the zenith of noon, Kadji had finished purchasing his provisions. He settled his debt to the innkeeper, paid for stabling his pony, mounted and rode forth from Nabdoor. The sleepy Rashemba knights merely waved him through the gates without a word of query; still and all, the Red Hawk did not breathe freely until he had left the shadow of the walls of Nabdoor-town far behind.
Ahead of him, grim and bleak under the grey wintry sky, the endless plains of whispering grasses stretched north and ever north to the gates of golden Khôr and the fulfillment of his mighty Quest. He turned his pony onto the caravan road to Khôr and rode with a blithe heart and a merry song on his lips under the lowering sky.
The air was crisp and clear and cold, and the wind which sprang up with late afternoon had a sharp biting edge like a steel knife, but he pulled his fringed cloak more closely about him and rode on. It was a small joy to the youth to know that every hour brought him nearer to his goal; that with every league he rode he drew closer to the Dragon Throne, and to the dreamed-of confrontation with the shrinking and cowardly black-heart that sat in the sacred chair and wore the false name of Holy Yakthodah, and to the epic moment of glory when through his hands the Axe of Thom-Ra would strike down the Usurper on the high seat of his power, amidst the fat greedy kugars and the venal and cunning Rashemba knights.
What would happen after that proud and splendid moment, the boy Kadji could not envision. His dream stopped with the fall of Shamad the False … what would happen thereafter, Kadji could not guess. Doubtless he would die himself in the very next moment, cut down by the enraged knights of Prince Bayazin of Rashemba …