"Bova, Ben - Orion 07 - Vengeance of Orion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

BOOK I: TROY
Chapter 1
THE slash of a whip across my bare back brought me to full awareness. "Pull, you
big ox! Stop your daydreaming or you'll think Zeus's thunderbolts are landing on
your shoulders!"
I was sitting on a rough wooden bench along the gunwale of a long, wallowing
boat, a heavy oar in my hands. No, not an oar. A paddle. We were rowing hard,
under a hot high sun. I could see the sweat streaming down the emaciated ribs
and spine of the man in front of me. There were welts across his nut-brown skin.
"Pull!" the man with the whip roared. "Stay with the beat."
I wore nothing but a stained leather loincloth. Sweat stung my eyes. My back and
arms ached. My hands were callused and dirty.
The boat was like a Hawaiian war canoe. The prow rose high into a grotesquely
carved figurehead; some fierce demonic spirit, I guessed, to protect the boat
and its crew. I glanced swiftly around as I dug my paddle into the heaving dark
sea and counted forty rowers. Amidships there were bales of goods, tethered
sheep and pigs that squealed with every roll of the deck.
The sun blazed overhead. The wind was fitful and light. The boat's only sail was
furled against its mast. I could smell the stench of the animals' droppings.
Toward the stern a brawny bald man was beating a single large mallet on a
well-worn drum, as steady as a metronome. We drove our paddles into the water in
time with his beatЧor took a sting from the rowing master's whip.
Other men were gathered down by the stern, standing, shading their eyes with one
hand and pointing with the other as they spoke with one another. They wore clean
knee-length linen tunics and cloaks of red or blue that went down to midcalf.
Small daggers at their belts, more for ornamentation than combat, I judged.
Silver inlaid hilts. Gold clasps on their cloaks. They were young men, lean,
their beards light. But their faces were grave, not jaunty. They were looking
toward something that sobered their youthful spirits. I followed their gaze and
saw a headland not far off, a low treeless rocky rise at the end of a sandy
stretch of beach. Obviously our destination was beyond that promontory.
Where was I? How did I get here? Frantically I ransacked my mind. The last firm
memory I could find was of a beautiful, tall, gray-eyed woman who loved me and
whom I loved. We were... a shudder of blackest grief surged through me. She was
dead.
My mind went spinning, as if a whirlpool had opened in the dark sea and dragged
me down into it. Dead. Yes. There was a ship, a very different ship. One that
traveled not through the water but through the vast emptiness between stars. I
had been on that ship with her. And it exploded. She died. She was killed. We
were both killed.
Yet I lived, sweaty, dirty, my back stinging with welts, on this strangely
primitive oversized canoe heading for an unknown land under a brazen cloudless
sky.
Who am I? With a sudden shock of fright I realized that I could remember nothing
about myself except my name. I am Orion, I told myself. But more than that I
could not recall. My memory was a blank, as if it had been wiped clean, like a
classroom chalkboard being prepared for a new lesson.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to think about that woman I had loved
and that fantastic star-leaping ship. I could not even remember her name. I saw
flames, heard screams. I held her in my arms as the heat blistered our skins and