"Esther M. Friesner - Up the Wall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

UP THE WALL
Esther M. Friesner

Reading a story like this makes one want to toss out all the old history
texts and let the fantasy and SF writing community have a go at redoing
them for the secondary-school market. Guaranteed you'd have more
students interested in history, and that they wouldn't be bored.
Roman history is particularly fascinating, but all too often shrunken
and curdled into an endless litany of Latin names and places and dates.
The history that's fun to read is history that lives and breathes. "Up the
Wall" doesn't merely breathe, it fairly vibrates with life. Whether it
would be allowed in history texts, it's contextual accuracy
notwithstanding, is another matter entirely. Most such weighty tomes
have perforce had all the life sucked out of them by "review committees,"
whose sole task in life it is to reduce all textbooks to the literary level of
vanilla pudding.
"Up the Wall" adds some spice. It also leaves you wondering who
you'd really like to have standing alongside you in a crisis.



A GUST OF NORTHCOUNTRY air swept over the undulating hump of
Hadrian's Wall, still bearing with it the chill of the sea. The northcountry
was the hard country even the starveling sheep had the grim air of failed
philosophers but worse land yet lay north of the wall, in wild Caledonia,
if the word of tribal Celts and travelers could be believed. Two figures in
the full finery of the Roman legions paced the earthworks as dusk came
on. The last rays of the setting sun struck gold from the breast of the eagle
standard jammed into the soil between them. In looks, in bearing, in the
solemn silence folded in wings around them, they carried a taste of
eternity.
It all would have been very heroic and poetical if the shorter man had
not reached up under his tunic and pteruges, undone his bracae, and
taken a long, reflective pee in the direction of Orkney. His comrade
affected not to notice.
 Rather by way of distraction than conversation, the taller fellow broke
silence almost simultaneously with his mate's breaking wind. In a good,
loud, carrying voice he declaimed, "Joy to the Ninth, Caius Lucius Piso!
The days of the beast are numbered. It shall be today that the hero comes;
I feel it. This morning all the omens were propitious." He had the
educated voice and diction a senator's son might envy. His Latin was high
and pure, preserved inviolate even here, at the northernmost outpost of
the legions. He turned to his mate. "What news from the south?"
"News?" his companion echoed. Then he placed a stubby tongue
between badly chapped lips and blew a sound that never issued from the
wolf's-head bell of any bucina. "Sweet sodding Saturn, Junie, how the
blazes would I have any more news from the friggin' south than you, stuck
up here freezin' me cobblers off, waitin' on the relief see if them buggers
ever show up, bleedin' arse-lickers the lot of 'em, and everyone knows
Tullius Cato's old lady's been slippin' into the commander's bedroll, so he