Feast 2, eBooki

Feast 2

Indeks Finanse, Finanse(1), Filozofos, Fesenjan, Fenix,

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Feast 2, eBooki

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BRIENNEEast of Maidenpool the hills rose wild, and the pines closed in about them like a hostof silent grey-green soldiers.Nimble Dick said the coast road was the shortest way, and the easiest, so they wereseldom out of sight of the bay. The towns and villages along the shore grew smaller asthey went, and less frequent. At nightfall they would seek an inn. Crabb would sharethe common bed with other travelers, whilst Brienne took a room for her and Podrick.“Cheaper if we all shared the same bed, m’lady,” Nimble Dick would say. “You couldlay your sword between us. Old Dick’s a harmless fellow. Chivalrous as a knight, andhonest as the day is long.”“The days are growing shorter,” Brienne pointed out.“Well, that may be. If you don’t trust me in the bed, I could just curl up on the floor,m’lady.”“Not on my floor.”“A man might think you don’t trust me none.”“Trust is earned. Like gold.”“As you say, m’lady,” said Crabb, “but up north where the road gives out, you’ll needt’ trust Dick then. If I wanted t’ take your gold at swordpoint, who’s to stop me?”“You don’t own a sword. I do.”She shut the door between them and stood there listening until she was certain he hadmoved away. However nimble he might be, Dick Crabb was no Jaime Lannister, noMad Mouse, not even a Humfrey Wagstaff. He was scrawny and ill fed, his only armora dinted halfhelm spotted with rust. In place of a sword, he carried an old, nickeddagger. So long as she was awake, he posed no danger to her. “Podrick,” she said,“there will come a time when there are no more inns to shelter us. I do not trust ourguide. When we make camp, can you watch over me as I sleep?”“Stay awake, my lady? Ser.” He thought. “I have a sword. If Crabb tries to hurt you, Icould kill him.”“No,” she said sternly. “You are not to try and fight him. All I ask is that you watchhim as I sleep, and wake me if he does anything suspicious. I wake quickly, you willfind.”Crabb showed his true colors the next day, when they stopped to water the horses.Brienne had to step behind some bushes to empty her bladder. As she was squatting,she heard Podrick say, “What are you doing? You get away from there.” She finishedher business, hiked up her breeches, and returned to the road to find Nimble Dickwiping flour off his fingers. “You won’t find any dragons in my saddlebags,” she toldhim. “I keep my gold upon my person.” Some of it was in the pouch at her belt, therest hidden in a pair of pockets sewn inside her clothing. The fat purse inside hersaddlebag was filled with coppers large and small, pennies and halfpennies, groats andstars . . . and fine white flour, to make it fatter still. She had bought the flour from thecook at the Seven Swords the morning she rode out from Duskendale.“Dick meant no harm, m’lady.” He wriggled his flour-spotted fingers to show he heldno weapon. “I was only looking to see if you had these dragons what you promisedme. The world’s full o’ liars, ready to cheat an honest man. Not that you’re one.”Brienne hoped he was a better guide than he was a thief. “We had best be going.” Shemounted up again.Dick would oft sing as they rode along together; never a whole song, only a snatch ofthis and a verse of that. She suspected that he meant to charm her, to put her off herguard. Sometimes he would try to get her and Podrick to sing along with him, to noavail. The boy was too shy and tongue-tied, and Brienne did not sing. Did you sing foryour father? Lady Stark had asked her once, at Riverrun. Did you sing for Renly? Shehad not, not ever, though she had wanted . . . she had wanted . . .When he was not singing, Nimble Dick would talk, regaling them with tales ofCrackclaw Point. Every gloomy valley had its lord, he said, the lot of them united onlyby their mistrust of outsiders. In their veins the blood of the First Men ran dark andstrong. “The Andals tried t’ take Crackclaw, but we bled them in the valleys anddrowned them in the bogs. Only what their sons couldn’t win with swords, their prettydaughters won with kisses. They married into the houses they couldn’t conquer, aye.”The Darklyn kings of Duskendale had tried to impose their rule on Crackclaw Point;the Mootons of Maidenpool had tried as well, and later the haughty Celtigars of CrabIsle. But the Crackclaws knew their bogs and forests as no outsider could, and if hardpressed would vanish into the caverns that honeycombed their hills. When not fightingwould-be conquerors, they fought each other. Their blood feuds were as deep and darkas the bogs between their hills. From time to time some champion would bring peaceto the Point, but it never lasted longer than his lifetime. Lord Lucifer Hardy, he was agreat one, and the Brothers Brune as well. Old Crackbones even more so, but theCrabbs were the mightiest of all. Dick still refused to believe that Brienne had neverheard of Ser Clarence Crabb and his exploits.“Why would I lie?” she asked him. “Every place has its local heroes. Where I comefrom, the singers sing of Ser Galladon of Morne, the Perfect Knight.”“Ser Gallawho of What?” He snorted. “Never heard o’ him. Why was he so bloodyperfect?”“Ser Galladon was a champion of such valor that the Maiden herself lost her heart tohim. She gave him an enchanted sword as a token of her love. The Just Maid, it wascalled. No common sword could check her, nor any shield withstand her kiss. SerGalladon bore the Just Maid proudly, but only thrice did he unsheathe her. He wouldnot use the Maid against a mortal man, for she was so potent as to make any fightunfair.”Crabb thought that was hilarious. “The Perfect Knight? The Perfect Fool, he soundslike. What’s the point o’ having some magic sword if you don’t bloody well use it?”“Honor,” she said. “The point is honor.”That only made him laugh the louder. “Ser Clarence Crabb would have wiped his hairyarse with your Perfect Knight, m’lady. If they’d ever have met, there’d be one morebloody head sitting on the shelf at the Whispers, you ask me. ‘I should have used themagic sword,’ it’d be saying to all the other heads. ‘I should have used the bloodysword.’”Brienne could not help but smile. “Perhaps,” she allowed, “but Ser Galladon was nofool. Against a foe eight feet tall mounted on an aurochs, he might well haveunsheathed the Just Maid. He used her once to slay a dragon, they say.”Nimble Dick was unimpressed. “Crackbones fought a dragon too, but he didn’t needno magic sword. He just tied its neck in a knot, so every time it breathed fire it roastedits own arse.”“And what did Crackbones do when Aegon and his sisters came?” Brienne asked him.“He was dead. M’lady must know that.” Crabb gave her a sideways look. “Aegon senthis sister up to Crackclaw, that Visenya. The lords had heard o’ Harren’s end. Beingno fools, they laid their swords at her feet. The queen took them as her own men, andsaid they’d owe no fealty to Maidenpool, Crab Isle, or Duskendale. Don’t stop thembloody Celtigars from sending men to t’ eastern shore to collect his taxes. If he sendsenough, a few come back to him . . . elsewise, we bow only to our own lords, and theking. The true king, not Robert and his ilk.” He spat. “There was Crabbs and Brunesand Boggses with Prince Rhaegar on the Trident, and in the Kingsguard too. A Hardy,a Cave, a Pyne, and three Crabbs, Clement and Rupert and Clarence the Short. Six foottall, he was, but short compared to the real Ser Clarence. We’re all good dragon men,up Crackclaw way.”The traffic continued to dwindle as they moved north and east, until finally there wereno inns to be found. By then the bayside road was more weeds than ruts. That nightthey took shelter in a fishing village. Brienne paid the villagers a few coppers to allowthem to bed down in a hay barn. She claimed the loft for Podrick and herself, andpulled the ladder up after them.“You leave me down here alone, I could bloody well steal your horses,” Crabb calledup from below. “Best you get them up the ladder too, m’lady.” When she ignored him,he went on to say, “It’s going to rain tonight. A cold hard rain. You and Pods will sleepall snug and warm, and poor old Dick will be shivering down here by myself.” Heshook his head, muttering, as he made a bed on a pile of hay. “I never knew such amistrustful maid as you.”Brienne curled up beneath her cloak, with Podrick yawning at her side. I was notalways wary, she might have shouted down at Crabb. When I was a little girl I believedthat all men were as noble as my father. Even the men who told her what a pretty girlshe was, how tall and bright and clever, how graceful when she danced. It was SeptaRoelle who had lifted the scales from her eyes. “They only say those things to winyour lord father’s favor,” the woman had said. “You’ll find truth in your looking glass,not on the tongues of men.” It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it hadstood her in good stead at Harrenhal when Ser Hyle and his friends had played theirgame. A maid has to be mistrustful in this world, or she will not be a maid for long, shewas thinking, as the rain began to fall.In the melée at Bitterbridge she had sought out her suitors and battered them one byone, Farrow and Ambrose and Bushy, Mark Mullendore and Raymond Nayland andWill the Stork. She had ridden over Harry Sawyer and broken Robin Potter’s helm,giving him a nasty scar. And when the last of them had fallen, the Mother haddelivered Connington to her. This time Ser Ronnet held a sword and not a rose. Everyblow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss.Loras Tyrell had been the last to face her wroth that day. He’d never courted her, hadhar... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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