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.Inside the stockade, the cobbled main street was wide enough for wagonsPage 112ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlto pass easily, though buildings overhung it.The six visitors walkedtheir mounts briskly, the quickstepping hooves of the dwarvesponies a sharp counterpoint to the louder clopping of the horses,and shortly they came to the town square.It was decorated with the bodies of men dead or dying, or soon tobe fourteen of them, standing or hanging with their wrists lashedoverhead, the sun beating on them.Above each was a sign in blood red:REBEL.Two were conspicuously dead, had begun to swell, and fliesswarmed on them.Six others were either dead or too weak to stand,hanging on their tethers, their hands swollen and black.Another six stoodgrimly, their weight on their feet instead of on their wrists.Three guards stood by.Most bypassers avoided looking.A stray dog, inslinking mode, approached one of the dead and sniffed.Spear leveled, one ofthe guards ran it off. Stay here, Macurdy murmured to the others, and dismounting, walked up toa guard. We re strangers, he said. From the Kingdom of theDiamond Flues. He gestured toward the posts. What sort of men arethese?The guard looked sourly at the posts, then at Macurdy s discolored face, buthis speech was civil. They re from the hills off north, he said. Part of arebel band. He wrinkled his nose. The dead ll be cut down this evening.Macurdy thanked him and returned to the others, to continue slowly onaround the square.Here and there were benches, mostly unoccupied.Macurdy looked over the auras of the few who sat there, and shortly pulled upand dismounted again, walking over to a man who was old by RudeLands standards, his mouth a sunken, lipless crease.Sitting down near him, Macurdy spoke quietly. A hard way to die,on those posts.The old man said nothing, as if he hadn t heard. We re from over west of the Great Muddy, traveling east to the SilverMountain.Came in to buy some goods, and saw those poor devils hanging bytheir wrists.Still nothing. Why would men rebel, in a country as fertile as this? Surely there must beplenty to eat.The toothless mouth seemed hardly to move, but words came from itnow, low and monotone. There are kingdoms where men are presseddown by cruelties and demands.Where the man who swings the scythemay have too little bread to eat, and where he d best not have a pretty wifeor daughter.Or pride. Ah.Then why so few rebels? The commons have no generals, no strong and able leaders.Norweapons, most of them, nor any place to hide. And yet those men. Macurdy gestured.The old man took a slow breath. They re Kullvordi hillsmen from offnorth.Their not-too-distant grandfathers were tribesmen who lived intheir own way.Even now they have bows and spears; some even have swords.And forests to hide in, where soldiers hardly dare to go.But if a rebelliongrows troublesome, the soldiers burn some farms, drive off their livestock,and kill hostages.And after a bit, the rebellion dies as if itnever was, leaving only a few hard men living off what game they canshoot, and by thieving.Until someone gives them away for a purse.The old man stopped then, and Macurdy asked no more.After a minute he lay apaw on a bent shoulder and squeezed lightly, then got up and left.The six of them rode back to the inn for the midday meal.Afterward, Macurdy, Melody, and Jeremid took a room with money Tossiprovided, then rode northward, killing time with exploration, while Blue Wingflew high, learning the land far more widely than they could.Page 113ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlMeanwhile the dwarves, with their ponies and a pack horse, returned to town tocarry out their part of the plan.When they d finished their business for theday, the youngest of them, Yxhaft Vorelsson Rich Lode, rode back out to theinn, where he sat in the pot room nursing a short mug of ale till the tallfolkgot back.After a supper of pot roast and boiled potatoes, they all wentto the small room the three tallfolk were to share.Tossi, Yxhaft said, hadseen to everything agreed on.As for security during the day there d been asingle guard in each of the rather widely-spaced watch shelters on the townwalls, but it was logical to expect two or more at night, to keepeach other awake.He also mapped the whereabouts of the ground-floorapartment Tossi had rented. If yer uncertain, he finished, there ll be a small sign by the door, with dwarf runes in charcoal, tellinthose who can read it and I doubt there s one such in all GorminTown, except ourselves that  here dwell three sons of the Rich Lode Clan [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]