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[ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ] arms around her neck and she helped him gain his feet by raising her head. He stood a long time that way, an arm over her withers, his face pressed to her neck. Already the dream's message, if there had been one, was fading. * * * From the moment the cloud-conveyance deposited them on the outskirts of Tyse, whirling in on itself to disappear with an audible "pop," Tempus had been conscious of the change in his internal rhythms the adjustment his body made to the smells and sights of war. His pulse beat more determinedly; his energy, never low, was continually at peak; his recent wounds tingled as they rushed to heal, and all the nagging debilities he'd lived with for interminable peaceful years made themselves known by their absence: his back didn't ache; his muscles refused to knot with fatigue; his senses were sharpened, and his stomach and gut tingled with a low-key excitement he'd not realized was part of what he missed when he cursed the sluggish peace long abroad upon the land. Jihan, craning her neck at Wizardwall, hulking over the town of Tyse dark and shimmering with sorcery which made a difficult climb nearly impossible, remarked upon its foreboding reaches. The Trôs horses, nostrils distended to catch the messages the cool wind brought them high in the foothills, arched their necks and danced along. They'd ridden only as far as the mercenaries' hostel that first day, where they checked in and secured clean box stalls for their mounts and requested the sort of accommodations reserved for Sacred Banders a pair of rooms with a door between. The duty officer looked at Jihan quizzically, but made no objection to Tempus lodging her as his guest. In the evening, they went sightseeing, Jihan's hand clamped upon his upper arm and her scale armor polished so that it glittered in the torchlit streets. To do so, they'd had to obtain passes they wore on armbands: Tyse was under martial law. Jihan was distressed by what she saw: wars of attrition have a particular coloration and stench of slow death about them, and Tyse's plight (enmeshed in civil war fomented by Nisibisi agitators, her once-great central "countoured city" reduced to a mile-long, walled and crumbling refugee camp holding southward-fleeing deportees chased down from Mygdonia with an eye toward straining Ranke's ability to cope, both economically and militarily) was obvious to even her untrained, newly human eye. He tried to explain to her that if not for the cause of Ilsig nationalism, then for the emancipation of the left-handed or equality of the obese or the hook-nosed would Mygdonia have come to the "aid" of the "oppressed" south, and mat whether life for Tysians would be any better under elitist Page 67 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Mygdonian rule than totalitarian Rankan, no one here had leisure to consider: one cannot abstain from war on one's own flanks. But as they walked the better neighborhoods, where the outreach satrapies maintained their missions and Rankan treaty cosignatories had their embassies and consulates, he realized that Upper Ranke could not long survive or absorb the influx of indigents, criminals, orphans and husbandless girls with fat child-bellies begging soldiers to let them sleep in doorways. Normal police and Elite Guard stations were so outnumbered as to be useless. Jails were full. Hangmen were busy. Common graves were the order of the day. On every street corner and byway army patrols were deployed. Sandbagged bunkers hosted infantry squadrons in Embassy Square; siege engines and "mountains" on wheels with men atop the towers and great slings to throw naphtha fireballs rivaled Wizardwall with their threatening profiles against the moonlit night sky. The sewers were overtaxed, and the refuse stacked high, and the stench, even in the better quarters, far from the teeming refugee camp, was intolerable; people burned cedar and pennyroyal and walked with kerchiefs bound over their noses and mouths. "But it's so terrible!" Jinan whispered, as he chuckled at her naivete. "You told me Sanctuary was the nadir of the human condition!" "It is. This is transitory, a condition imposed from without. In Sanctuary, the status quo is maintained by choice. Those who live there make the town what it is. As for terrible I'm not sure it's terrible enough to have the desired effect." "And what is that?" She turned her head to look at him in the torch- and moonlit street; he saw the red flecks stirring in her eyes: she was earnest, angry, or distressed. "To stop insurrection here: containment. No one wants this to be the state of empire. Civil war " "No, no. What is that ?" She pointed toward the intersection they were approaching, lighted on every side with panniers of oil borne by colossal lions of chocolate granite. "Oh, that& the palace. There's a royal family in there somewhere, gnashing their teeth and picking at motheaten ceremonial brocades. Tyse's being administrated by a provisional military governor, invited in along with the Rankan army to reestablish order& " He thought better of explanations. He [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ] |