Read Online The Scar by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko - Free Book Online Page B

so happy with life that he glanced kindly at the poor man.
    “Take a coin, drink to my luck.…”
    “Thank you,” answered the poor man slowly.
    Suddenly the beggar’s hand gripped the wrist of the merchant with surprising force. A broad-shouldered, red-faced confederate emerged from an alleyway and caught the purse, which was snatched from the passerby’s waist seconds earlier by the poor man. The merchant tried to shout, but the bulky fellow threw a rope around his neck.
    Everything ended very rapidly. The body of the unlucky merchant, “relieved” of purse, tobacco pouch, and thin neckkerchief, was packed into a bag—not to be distinguished from hundreds of other bags, which were in abundance in the commercial streets. The bulky fellow and beggar, breathing heavily, finished their job when a shadow appeared on the road.
    Both raised their eyes and started back in horror.
    The gray-robed man smiled from under the hood. In his hand—with the tattoo on the wrist—coins tinkled.
    “Tail, Nutty, be moderately greedy,” said the man in a soft voice that made the killers tremble. “I require your assistance.”
    *   *   *
     
    A week went by, and the city thankfully forgot about the tragic incident associated with the name of Egert Soll. Grass began to grow on the student’s grave, it was announced that a new arena for the boar fights would be erected on the shore of the Kava river, and the captain of the guards, the husband of the beautiful Dilia, proclaimed that there would be a parade before the guards set out into the countryside for their upcoming drills, which were pompously termed military field maneuvers.
    The maneuvers took place every year. They were implemented to remind the gentlemen of the guards that they were not simply a riotous assembly of carousers and duelists, but a military unit. Egert loved these drills because they naturally afforded him the chance to boast of his prowess, and he always looked forward to their approach.
    This time he was not looking forward to them.
    His wound had scabbed over; it almost did not hurt anymore. His manservant had caught the trick of shaving Egert with special care: hair on one’s cheeks and chin was considered incompatible with aristocratic birth, so Egert did not consider, even for a moment, hiding his wound with a beard. Little by little, those around him became accustomed to his new appearance, and he himself often forgot to think about his wound, but with every passing day the strange anxiety, which had taken up residence in his soul, grew steadily, until it began to turn into a flurry of alarm.
    During the day he felt tolerably well, but as soon as darkness settled in, the alarm unaccountably crept out of shadowy corners and chased him home, where at the command of the young master, his servant brought almost all the candles in the house into his rooms. However, even though Egert’s rooms blazed with light like a ballroom, at times it still seemed to him that the boars, their eyes full of blood, might trot right out of the tapestries.
    One evening he found a means of combating this strange affliction: He ordered his servant to turn down the bed before sunset. He lay down, and although he did not succeed in falling asleep right away, Egert stubbornly refused to open his clenched eyes. Finally, he slid into slumber and then into a dream.
    Glorious Heaven, it would have been better to stand on guard the whole night.
    In the desolate predawn hour a dream came to him. He had already had many dreams that night, simple, ordinary, more or less pleasant dreams: women, horses, acquaintances, cockroaches. Waking up, he forgot his dreams sooner than he realized he had dreamed; this time he awoke in the middle of the night, his sweaty nightshirt molded to his body, shaking like a puppy left out in the rain.
    It was likely influenced by some long-forgotten tale about the incursion of the black plague that arose from the furthest reaches of his memory, one of