"Harry Harrison - Hammer Cross 1 - The Hammer and the Cross" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

and sending up great plumes of spray. Godwin had been there so long that he no
longer
heard the roar of the collision, noticed it only when the spray reached so
high up the cliff
that the water which soaked his cloak and hood and dripped onto his face
turned salt
instead of fresh.
Not that it made any difference, he thought numbly. It was all just as cold.
He could
go back into the shelter, kick the slaves aside, warm his frozen hands and
feet by the fire.
There was no chance of raiders on a day like this. The Vikings were seamen,
the greatest
seamen in the world, or so the y said. You didn't have to be a great seaman to
know that
there was no point in putting out on a day like this. The wind was due eastтАФ
no, he
reflected, due east a point north. Fine for blowing you across from Denmark,
but how could
you keep a longship from broaching to in this sea? And how could you steer for
a safe
landing once you arrived? No, no chance at all. He might as well be by the
fire.
Godwin looked longingly at the shelter with its little trail of smoke
instantly whipped
away by the wind, but turned his pace and began to shuffle along the palisade
again. His
lord had trained him well. "Don't think, Godwin," he had said. "Don't think
maybe they'll
come today and maybe they won't. Don't believe that it's worth keeping a
lookout some of
the time and it's not worth it the rest. While it's day, you stay on the Head.
Look out all the
time. Or one day you'll be thinking one thing and some Stein or Olaf'll think
another and
they'll be ashore and twenty miles inland before we can catch up with themтАФif
we ever do.
And that's a hundred lives lost and a hundred pounds in silver and cattle and
burnt thatch.
And the rents not paid for years after. So watch, Thane, or it's your estates
that will suffer."
So his lord Ella had said. And behind him the black crow, Erkenbert, had
crouched
over his parchment, his quill squeaking as he traced out the mysterious black
lines that
Godwin feared more than he feared the Vikings. "Two months' service on
Flamborough
Head to Godwin the thane," he had pronounced. "He is to watch till the third
Sunday after
Ramis Palmarum." The alien syllables had nailed the orders down. Watch they