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

made the metal walls around us glow hell-red.
"He's beaten us, Orion," she said to me. "We'll die together. That's the only
consolation we will have, my love."
I remembered pain. Not merely the agony of flesh searing and splitting open,
steaming and cooking even as our eyes were burned away, but the torture of being
torn apart forever from the one woman in all the universes whom I loved.
The whip cracked against my bare back again.
"Harder! Pull harder, you whoreson, or by the gods I'll sacrifice you instead of
a bullock once we make landfall!"
He leaned over me, his scarred face red with anger, and slashed at me again with
the whip. The pain of the lash was nothing. I closed it off without another
thought. I always could control my body completely. Had I wanted to, I could
have snapped this hefty paddle in two and driven the ragged end of it through
the whipmaster's thick skull. But what was the sting of his whip compared to the
agony of death, the hopelessness of loss?
We rowed around the rocky headland and saw a calm sheltered inlet. Spread along
the curving beach were dozens of ships like our own, pulled far up on the sand.
Huts and tents huddled among their black hulls like shreds of paper littering a
city street after a parade. Thin gray smoke issued from cook fires here and
there. A pall of thicker, blacker smoke billowed off in the distance.
A mile or so inland, up on a bluff that commanded the beach, stood a city or
citadel of some sort. High stone walls with square towers rising above the
battlements. Far in the distance, dark wooded hills rose and gradually gave way
to mountains that floated shimmering in the blue heat haze.
The young men at the stern seemed to get tenser at the sight of the walled city.
Their voices were low, but I heard them easily enough.
"There is it," one of them said to his companions. His voice was grim.
The youth next to him nodded and spoke a single word.
"Troy."

Chapter 2
WE landed, literally, driving the boat up onto the beach until its bottom grated
against the sand and we could go no farther. Then the whipmaster bellowed at us
as we piled over the gunwales, took up ropes, andЧstraining, cursing, wrenching
the tendons in our arms and shouldersЧwe hauled the pitch-blackened hull up onto
the beach until only its stern and rudder paddle touched the water.
Hardly any tide to speak of, I knew. When they finally sail past the Pillars of
Herakles and out into the Atlantic, that's when they'll encounter real tides.
Then I wondered how I knew that.
I did not have time to wonder for long. The whipmaster allowed us a scant few
moments to get our breath back, then he started us unloading the boat. He roared
and threatened, shaking his many-thonged whip at us, his cinnamon-red beard
ragged and tangled, the scar on his left cheek standing out white against his
florid frog's-eyed face. I carried bales and bleating sheep and squirming,
foul-smelling pigs while the gentlemen in their cloaks and linen tunics and
their fine sandals walked down a gangplank, each followed by two or more slaves
who carried their goods, mostly arms and armor, from what I could see.
"Fresh blood for the war," grunted the man next to me, with a nod toward the
young noblemen. He looked as grimy as I felt, a stringy old fellow with skin as
tanned and creased as weather-beaten leather. His hair was sparse, gray, matted