Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
"As high and as far as you're going." Wally spoke for both of them, and Hal clapped his shoulder.
"That makes six of us, eight with Aboli and Althuda, and it'll be high and far enough to suit all our tastes, I warrant you." here was a final exchange of. messages as Aboli and Sukeena explained the plan they had worked out. Hal suggested refinements and drew up a list of items that Aboli and Sukeena must try to steal to make their existence in the wilderness more certain. Chief among these were a chart and compass, and a backstaff if they could find one.
Aboli and Sukeena made their final preparation without letting their trepidation or excitement become apparent to the rest of the household. Dark eyes were always watching everything that happened in the slave quarters, and they trusted nobody now that they were so close to the chosen day. Sukeena gradually assembled those items for which Hal had asked, and added a few of her own that she knew they would need.
The day before the planned escape, Sukeena summoned Aboli into the main living area of the residence where before he had never been allowed to enter. "I need your strength to move the carved armoire in the banquet hall," she told him, in front of the cook and two others of the kitchen staff. Aboli followed her submissively as a trained hound on a leash. Once they were alone, Aboli dropped the demeanour of the meek slave.
"Be quick!" Sukeena warned him. "The mistress will return very soon. She is with Slow John at the bottom of the garden." She moved swiftly to the shutter of the window that overlooked the lawns, and saw that the ill-assorted couple were still in earnest conversation under the oak trees.
"There is no limit to her depravity," she whispered to herself, as she watched Katinka laugh at something the executioner had said. "She would make love to a pig or a poisonous snake if the fancy came upon her." Sukeena shuddered at the memory of that ophidian tongue exploring. the secret recesses of her own body. It will never happen again, she promised herself, only four more days to endure before Althuda will be safe. If she calls me to her nest before then I will plead that my courses are flowing.
She heard something whirl in the air like a great bird in flight and glanced back over her shoulder to see that Aboli had taken one of the swords from the display of weapons in the hallway. He was testing its balance and temper, swinging it in singing circles around his head, so that the reflections of light off the blade danced on the white walls.
He set it aside and chose another, but liked it not at all and placed it back with a frown. "Hurry!" she called softly to him. Within minutes he had picked out three blades, not for the jewels that decorated the hilts but for the litheness and temper of their blades. All three were curved scimitars made by the annourers of Shah Jahan at Agra on the Indian continent. "They were made for a Mogul prince and sit ill in the hand of a rough sailor, but they will do until I can find a cutlass of good Sheffield steel to replace them." Then he picked out a shorter blade, a kukri knife used by the hill people of Further India, and he shaved a patch of hair off his forearm.
"This will do for the close work I have in mind." He grunted with satisfaction.
"I have marked well those you have chosen," Sukeena told him. "Now leave them on the rack or their empty slots will be noticed by the other house slaves. I will pass them to you on the evening before the day."
That afternoon she took her basket and, the conical straw Hat on her head, went up into the mountain. Although any watcher would not have understood her intent, she made certain that she was out of sight, hidden in the forest that filled the great ravine below the summit. There was a dead tree that she had noted on many previous outings. From the rotting pith sprouted a thicket of tiny purple toadstools. She pulled on a pair of gloves before she began to pick them. The gills beneath the parasol-shaped tops were of a pretty yellow colour. These fungi were toxic, but only if eaten in quantity would they be fatal. She had chosen them for this quality she did not want the lives of innocent men and their families on her conscience. She placed them in the bottom of the basket and covered them with other roots and herbs before she descended the steep mountainside and walked sedately back through the vineyards to the residence.
That evening Governor van de Velde held a gala dinner in the great hall, and invited the notables from the settlement and all the Company dignitaries. These festivities continued late, and after the guests had left the household staff and slaves were exhausted. They left Sukeena to make her rounds and lock up the kitchens for the night.
Once she was alone she boiled the purple toadstools and reduced the essence to the consistency of new honey. She poured the liquid into one of the empty wine bottles from the feast. It had no odour and she did not have to sample it to know that it had only the faintest taste of the fungi. One of the women who worked in the kitchens at the castle barracks was in her debt. Sukeena's potions had saved her eldest son when he had been stricken by the smallpox. The next morning she left the bottle in a basket with remedies and potions in the carriage for Aboli to deliver to the woman.
When Aboli drove the Governor down to the castle, van de Velde was ashen-faced and grumpy with the effects of the previous night's debauchery. Aboli left a message in the slot in the wall that- read, "Eat nothing from the garrison kitchen on the last evening."
That night Hal poured the contents of the stew kettle into the latrine bucket before any of the men were tempted to sample it. The steaming aroma filled the cell and to the starving seamen it smelled like the promise of eternal life. They groaned and gritted their teeth, and cursed Hal, their fates and themselves to see it wasted.
The next morning at the accustomed hour the dungeon began to stir with life. Long before dawn outlined the four small, barred windows, men groaned and coughed and then crept, one at a time to ease themselves, grunting and farting as they voided in the latrine bucket. Then, as the significance of the day dawned upon them, a steely, charged silence gripped them.
Slowly the light of day filtered down upon them from the windows and they looked at each other askance. They had never been left this late before. On every other morning they had been at work on the walls an hour earlier than this.
