The Mist and the Lightning. Part 18 - стр. 12
“Enough,” Nik said barely.
Kors felt sorry for him: “What am I doing? Why am I humiliating him?!”
“Forgive me,” he said hastily, “forgive me…”
“Why are you asking for forgiveness from me, it makes no difference to me,” and Nik, covering his face with a mask, turned away and walked away.
Kors saw Nik walk up to his Unclean Power and, inserting his healthy leg into the stirrup, confidently jumped into the saddle. Kors turned away in frustration. With annoyance, he looked at Adrian – he also looked at him, looked with his narrow, deep-set eyes, surrounded by black stripes of indelible arrows, looking at his master, as it seemed to Kors, even somehow too impudent. And now Kors didn’t feel, as usual, his inner suffering. He didn’t like it at all.
“I could kill you with one blow,” said Kors. He stroked his iron stick hanging from his belt, and Adrian noticed the gesture, the way he gently stroked it.
And now Kors listened with pleasure to his emotions:
“Coward,” he chuckled. “I’m not going to kill you, because then you’ll go to a feast for your gods. No, no, you will suffer here much more, Adri…”
Adrian dropped his eyes.
“Useless stupid creature,” Kors hissed with anger and disappointment, and spat in his face.
Chapter 4
The unclean ones drove slowly behind the main army of blacks: they were clearly in no hurry and often stayed at a halt all night and all the next day, lagging behind the people more and more. The warriors of Zagpeace and Tol have gone far ahead. Kors was not upset. He wanted to be with Nik and didn’t want to return to the Black City, he was afraid of this and was also playing for time. It was better that way – to stay with Nik as long as possible, until business in the capital didn’t twist them into a deadly whirlpool. Therefore, Kors was ready to go on this road endlessly.
This time they stood near a small picturesque lake for two days, and although Kors really didn’t want this, he still had to let Nik go play cards with his unclean ones. Kors and Arel remained in their tent, Valentine brought them dinner, and then removed the dishes and folded up a small camp table and chairs so that there was more space inside and the sirs could lie on the skins.
“Valentine, burn some more of this resin against insects,” said Kors. “I am annoyed by its smell, but the mosquitoes infuriate me even more!”
“Yes, sir,” Valentine immediately responded and put a tightly pressed piece of coal on a small censer in the corner.
With the help of a thin candle, he set it on fire: the coal began to smoke, covering a small area of the tent with thick gray smoke. Valentine, lifting the bottom of his helmet as far as possible, began to gently blow on the flat piece until it stopped smoking, red-hot. Then Valentine put small balls of tree resin on top of it. Softening on a hot coal, the resin spread a rather specific aroma over the tent, to which one had to get used to; but this pungent smell was good at repelling insects.
“I all like the southern lands,” said Kors, “except for the abundance of all kinds of flying and crawling evil spirits. I hate insects, as well as spiders and snakes!
“Yes,” Arel agreed with him and slapped himself on the leg, trying to kill an impressive, but already sluggish from the smoke and smell of tar, mosquito.