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:
The hall was crowded, despite the early hour, and men sprawled drinking at long low wooden tables. They were drinking vintage wine from rare glass bottles and stoppered earthenware pots, rather than sour beer or cheap ale from leathern jacks. These things the boy noted at once, and not without certain qualms, for although his purse was well-stuffed with gold and silver coin, it was not bottomless—Zarouk, had seen him well-furnished of pocket, reminded of the aphorism that the man who pays his way liberally goes a smooth road, while he who pinches his purse is ever in suspicion.
A fat, oily innkeeper with a smooth smile and cold ugly eyes greeted him effusively and found a room for him on the third floor of the establishment, though at a price that caused the boy warrior to wince visibly. These necessaries accomplished, and a livery-clad servingman having carried his saddlebags up to his room, Kadji turned aside into the hall and found a place for himself near the fire and ordered a hearty meal, although not without wondering how much, it would cost him. When he asked, with a forced and false casualness, the serving girl named a figure so extreme that he had to bite his lip against crying Out the word. “thievery!”— and, sourly, the boy reflected that with prices like these he would have to accomplish his Quest swiftly or find himself sleeping empty-pocketed in some alleyway.
Kadji devoured the meal with relish, despite the cost, and was finishing his pastry when the noise of an altercation forced itself upon his attention.
While eating, the boy had noticed in an offhand manner the arrival of a kugar lordling into the inn’s main hall, for the man made so much noise slamming in through the door, and such a great affair of shaking off the snow from his overcloak, and such a proud display of ruffled sleeve and velvet sash and gold buttons that he could hardly be ignored. For all that he was already flushed and somewhat the worse for wine, the young lordling loudly called for more, and so peremptory were his several needs that it took three hurrying maids to settle and serve him. Seated as if throned, booted feet thrust out before him, the kugar rudely stared about him at the others in so offensive a manner that Kadji wondered how the boorish fellow survived from day to day without getting into continuous fights.
He little dreamed that before the world was an hour older he would be facing this same kugar with naked steel himself.
IT WAS a sudden explosion of thunderous bellowings that drew Kadji’s attention to the scene.
The kugar had been sprawled out, feet rudely thrust wide, blocking the aisle between the long low tables, and, it seemed, a passing fellow had stumbled over them. Instead of making his apologies for causing the other man to stumble, the kugar sprang to his feet with a roar of rage and hurled a string of epithets at the inoffensive fellow. Looking up, Kadji saw that the man was a little old man, lean and bony, in the grey robes of a wizard. A small, timid, inoffensive old man he seemed, with worried and watery eyes, slitted in the Easterling fashion, his yellowy head shaven but for a black queue, his hands buried in the capacious sleeves of his wizard robes, which, Kadji saw, were soiled and patched and tattered. This was odd, for the House of the Seven Moons catered most obviously to those whose purses were well-stuffed with gold coin. But there was no time to dwell on this peculiarity now, for events were exploding into a quarrel.
The mousey little wizard had been pattering down the narrow aisle between the crowded benches when his lean and bony shanks collided with the outstretched legs of the noisy, red-faced young lout of a kugar. The old man, his head bowed on his chest in deep thought or meditation, had not spied the spread-out legs of the drunken and offensive young lordling, and he had stumbled over them. Squealing in dismay, the wizard staggered, tripped, and nearly fell. Thrusting out his hands to steady himself, he had the bad luck to strike the kugar’s arm just as the surly young lordling was hoisting a full goblet of fiery liquor to his lips. When he joggled the lordling’s arm, the cup went flying, and so did the expensive purple beverage therein.
The kugar surged to his feet with an inarticulate roar of rage, and stood there with fire gleaming in his bloodshot, piggish, squinting little eyes, while the purple brandy dripped from his soaked japon and velvets.
Now, as, attracted by the disturbance, Kadji looked up, It was to see the poor old wizard shrinking beneath torrents of verbal abuse, fumbling for apologetic words, frightened gaze roaming about, while the burly young lordling, who towered over him with one red hand clenched on the hilt of his curved sabre, bellowed the vilest and coarsest insults at the old man from the top of his voice.
The little wizard was confused and bewildered and stammered for polite words; the kugar, younger by twenty years and taller by half a yard, glared down at him, red-faced and roaring, little pig-eyes fierce and brilliant and alive with the pleasure of a born bully.
“You foul-breathed, toad-hearted, stinking lump of dung! Dirty my boots, will you! Kick my feet out of your way, will you! Stinking gob of an Easterling whore! I’ll wash my boot-leather in your filthy blood, you white-gutted old turd!” roared the red-faced young lordling.
“Highborn and most noble lord;” the timid little man protested, stammering in alarm and gazing about with frightened eyes as if to enlist the aid of the others in the hall, “I swear to the Gods I mean no harm! This lowly and most insignificant one intended no insult to your lordly self! Ten thousand apologies if this vile one has given offense! I beg you—I pray you—accept these humble apologies, and permit an old man to pass and take his weary bones to bed!”
His bleating tones were drowned beneath the bullthroated bellow of the kugar. And, as they wandered in pitiful pleading from face to face, meeting only indifference or derision, the frightened eyes of the little wizard came at last to rest on the face of Kadji.
“Pass, is it, you reeking lump of filth! To your bed, eh? Not likely, pig of an Easterling—more like, to your grave!”
And the kugar clapped his hand again on time hilt of his sabre and made to draw it from its scabbard of oiled leather. But he did not. For a hand seized his wrist and held it in a grip like iron. Kadji’s hand.
iii. The Honor of Cyrib Jashpode
THE ROOM became silent as death, save for the sussuration of indrawn breath as many men sucked in their teeth, and the muted thump and clatter as men moved away to clear a space.
“You touch me … you dare to lay hands upon me!” The face of the young kugar lordling went pale with astonishment and he stared as if marveling into the grim serious eyes of Kadji.
Kadji spoke in low, quiet tones, and his words were courteous. “I pray you, lord, that you permit this poor old man to pass by without harm, and that you do the kindness to accept his apology for stumbling against your feet; and I beg your pardon for this interference, but, look, lord! The man is old enough to be your father, or mine: and he hath no steel. Surely the young noble lord would not draw steel on a harmless old man incapable of defending himself!”
The little pig-eyes stared marveling down at the boy and in wondering tones the blond kugar repeated: “You lay hands on me … you dare to lay your dirty paws on the Highborn … you, a dog-gutted whelp of Ushamtar gutters? Haroo!”