"Adams, Robert - Castaways in Time 05 - Of Myths and Monsters 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)

On the ride back to their camp halfway between Tara and Lagore, Bass asked the big, gruff, jovial Reichsherzog Wolfgang, who rode just behind him, wearing his fluted three-quarter armor, his face red and steaming sweat, "What, pray tell, would you all have done had I not come out, had Brian decided to cast me into one of his cells or take off my head?"

"Attack, mein freund," was the German's blunt answer. "Attack and either free you or avenge you in much red blood."

"Attack a fortified palace complex without engines, cannon, or even infantry, Wolfie? Be serious-cavalry alone can't do that."

"No?" spoke up another of Bass's officers. "And cavalry brigades cannot prize armed merchant ships, either, my lord, yet as I recall, you proved to King Arthur, England and Wales, indeed, to all the world that a cavalry brigade commanded by Your Grace could do and had done just that, some years back."

"That was an entirely different set of circumstances, and you ought to know it, Sir AH," snapped back Bass. "After all, you were there."

"Bass, Bass, mein Freund" rumbled the Reichsherzog, "vat ve planned an accomplishment of renown would not haf been. Defenses of such a poorness as those of that palace to Irischers daunting may be, but not to any other. My good Kalymks stood behind, their fine crossbows unseen, vhile those before them kept on their pistols and swords the eyes of the guards. Other of my Kalmyks were vith ropes ready.

"On command, each of the visible guards a quarrel would haf received to take to his heart, then the Kalmyks vould have the moat swum, loops of ropes over the merlons thrown, then all to the top of the wall would have climbed up, and, after any other guards cut down were, the bridge would have lowered und the grille raised up and the gates opened and everyone else to ride in would have to either free or avenge you."

Bass believed it, all of it, for the uncle of the Holy Roman Emperor never lied, and he felt a shuddery feeling, a brief prickle of his nape-hairs. He still sometimes felt himself to be basically unworthy, undeserving of such degrees of loyalty.

"Dammit!" he thought to himself. "This bunch would have done just what Wolfie outlined, too. They would've shot down those guards, climbed the walls, opened the grounds to the rest, then butchered every man, woman, and child in there had I been already executed, or they would have all died in the attempt. And goddammit, I'm not, truly not, the kind of man they all seem to think I am, the kind that a pack of howling, murderous savages like my galloglaiches can and do all but worship as a living deity, that is just not me, never was.

"But now, God help me, it is. That's just the way they all see me-their own, personal, bloody-handed god-in-the-flesh, their chosen war-chief, battle leader- me, Bass Foster, who, in another world, deliberately passed up a promising army career, a direct appointment to West Point mine for the asking with graduation to come as a captain, not merely a second lieutenant. Bass Foster, who just passed up a lifetime sinecure like that because he said he was tired of killing-tired of doing it himself, tired of sending other men to do it, tired of ordering still others to their deaths. So how did that man of announced peace wind up as a widely hailed war-leader and very personal participant in this world of gory and seemingly never-ending chaos and death wrought by man on man, then?

"I never even tried to write science fiction on the world of my birth, but knowing me, even if I had, I could never in a million years have dreamed up a scenario so ridiculously farfetched and so utterly implausible as this one I've lived and am now living."

It was not really ail that many years past, although it now often seemed a lifetime ago to Bass, but still could he hear very clearly the voice of that state trooper shouting above the noise made by the rotor of the nearby helicopter and the rush of the rain on that dark and stormy night on the banks of the Potomac River.

The uniformed man in the rain slicker and ten-gallon hat had made no secret of the fact that he thought Bass's decision to be one born out of insanity, alcoholism, or both together, but he was just too tired, harried, overworked, and hurried just then by the fast-approaching flood bearing down upon them from upriver to waste any further time in argument.

"A'right, Foster, I ain't got no right to force you to abandon yore property, see, but I done done my job, I done tol' you the way she's stacked. The river's goin' to crest at least ten, fifteen foot above where she's at right now. And the way yore house is situated, it'll be at least two foot of water in yore top level, even if the whole house don't get undermined and come all to pieces, see. And thishere's the lastest round the chopper's goin' to make in thishere direction, too. And don't you figger you can allus change your mind and take to your boat, because it won't last in that river way she is and will be any longer than a wet snowball in hell. So you still sure you ain't comin' with us?"

On receiving again Bass's same, firm negative reply, the trooper had blown up at the steady stream of rainwater cascading off the slightly canted tip of his nose and said, shrugging, "A'right, citizen, it's yore dang funeral ... if n we ever finds yore body to bury it, that is."

He also remembered sitting at the picture window in the living room of his trilevel home, watching the rampant, widening, deepening, grey and swirling river tear away first his runabout boat, then his dock, sweeping both swiftly away downstream along with its other booty-animal, vegetable, and mineral.

He recalled thinking then that that trooper had been right, he had indeed been some kind of fool to remain behind here. But too this was the only real property that he had ever been able to call entirely his, and the largest part of his net worth was sunk into it and its appurtenances, and he was dee-double-damned if he would leave his home and possessions to the ravages of wind and water, not to mention the packs of looters who were certain to flock from the slums of Washington, D.C., to descend on the affluent, abandoned homes just as soon as they could make it. Besides, he trusted less the dire pronouncements of "authorities" and "experts" than he did his own, unexplainable dead-certainty that he would, somehow, survive the coming disaster.

Not that that inexplicable certainty had not been more than just a little shaken when he, hearing odd noises from above during a brief lull of the storm and the pelting rain, had climbed up to his low attic to find all three of his cats clinging tightly to crosspieces of the rafters and mewling feline moans of terror. More significantly, all three of them-the huge, rangy black torn, the older queen, and the younger silver Persian which had been Carolyn's last gift to him-were good hunters, merciless killers ... yet they were peaceably sharing those rafters with several flying squirrels and a brace of soft brown house mice. That had been when he had started both to get truly worried and to call himself a fool, aloud.

He had tried to telephone a neighbor, only to discover that the telephones all were dead, and when the lights had all gone out, he had not even bothered to check the circuit breakers. He had dragged an easy chair closer to the picture window, fetched a bottle of Jameson's Irish whiskey to keep him company, and then just sat, sipping neat whiskey and watching the inexorable rise of the angry grey water and reflecting upon his past life.

Through his mind's eye, he had relived the joys and the sorrows, the wins and the losses, the victories and defeats which had studded and marked his forty-five, almost forty-six years of life. And, as the level of the river rose higher and higher, while that of the bottle sank lower and lower, his thoughts had turned finally to Carolyn.

Dear, lovely, loving Carolyn. She and the deep love they two had shared for so tragically short an interlude had been the greatest win of his lifetime. Therefore, her murder at the hands of some junkie musician and his homosexual lover had been the greatest of his losses. That horrendous loss had completely disrupted his life, had driven him almost over the edge into insanity, and the constant longing for her was even now turning him into an alcoholic. He had grieved again for a while, then he had begun to feel that, somehow, his dead love was truly near to him, and, murmuring softly to her, he had fallen asleep in the chair, there before the window.

The hot, bright sun on his face had awakened him, had blinded him when first he had blinked open his gummy eyelids to expose his bleary eyes.

"Well, what the hell," he had groaned, "I was right, after all, and . . . Ugh, my mouth tastes like used kitty litter. Faghl"

Stumbling into the kitchen, he had flicked the light switch out of force of habit . . . and the tubes had flickered into life.

"Well, good God Almighty," he had remarked, "those damn utility crews are really on the ball, for a change. Okay, so let's see if the phone works, too. Shit, still dead, only one miracle at a time, it looks like."