"Carol Emshwiller - Boys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

moment. I hear them begin again with even more vigor.

Here beside me Una ululates, too. She struggles against me but I hang on.

"How could you? That's the tree of dead boys."

I let go.

"All the babies buried there are boys. Some are yours."

I can't let this new knowledge color my thinking. I have to think of the safety of my boys. "Let us go,
then."

"Tell them to stop."

"Would you let us go for the sake of a tree?"

"We would."

I give the order.



┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖



The women move away from a whole section of the wall, they even provide their ladders. I tell the boys
to go. There's no way they could carry me back and no way I could ever climb to the citadel again.

No sooner are the boys gone, even to the last tootle of the fifes, the last triumphant drum beat.тАж
(We always march home as though victorious whether victorious or not.) Hearing them go, I can't help
but groan, though not from pain this time. No sooner have the mothers come down from the wall, but that
I hear, ululating again. Una stamps in to me.

"What now?"

"It's Hob. Your enemy.тАж Your enemy has dropped him off at the edge of your foothills."

I can see it on her face.

"He's dead."

"Of course he's dead. You are all as good as dead."

She blames me for Hob. "I blame myself."

"I hate you. I hate you all."

I don't believe we'll be seeing many boys anymore. I would warn us if I was able, I would be the