Книга только для ознакомления
.
TO HIS SURPRISE, HE CAME BACK TO SEE HER
WITHIN A WEEK AFTER THE FUNERAL.
*****
On the front wall of the classroom hung a tapestry (on
loan from the permanent gallery of the city fathers)
picturing knights riding silver and gold dragons, aiming
lances at red dragons and riders. The dragons, woven in
metal thread, glittered disturbingly in the grim gray hall.
The novices were excited. Two of them were leaping
benches in mock swordplay, and almost all of the rest were
ringed around the term's first fight: two boys, rolling on the
floor.
Moran strode into the room, carrying two breastplates.
The boys froze in place, then drifted to seats. Tarli's lower
lip was bleeding. Another novice - Saliak, Moran noted -
had bloody knuckles.
Oh-ho, Moran thought. It's starting already. He
walked in silence to the flat table below the tapestry and
turned to face the novices, who were now sitting quietly on
the low wooden benches. Only Tarli, sitting apart from the
others, was too short for his feet to touch the floor.
Two other novices sat apart: the ungainly tall boy, and
the fat one. Moran, from long experience, knew that the
three would be targets in the barracks
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