"Raymond Kaminski - The Amazons of Somelon v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kaminski Raymond)
Now that her eyes had the freedom of their sockets, they discovered a Teutite merchant sprawled at her feet, his eyes open wide as though staring up under the short skirt of her tunic, the only thing Sheryl wore beneath her armor. His eyes were dark and already filling with cream-colored eggs of the bluebottle flies. Soon enough, maggots would poke their squirming heads out through the sockets and slide back into the moist flesh when they found the dry air waiting to grab them.
Next to the merchant lay what was left of a gypsy driver. His gold-swirled shirt was shredded and dirty, and where his vest had slid aside there were rows of bright red punctures. The driver's head was twisted, his tongue pushed out. A raider had grabbed hold of the scarf around his neck, pulled him from the seat, and dragged him behind his pony, while the other raiders pierced him through with their lances. Where his right ear once held a rhinestone earring, there was only a shredded, brown hole.
Sheryl kicked over the swollen body of the merchant. His ear had been cut off as well. Sheryl knew the meaning of this mutilation.
"Horlas," she hissed.
Micar had led them here. Sheryl's lips curled, showing just the tips of her teeth. She looked toward the desert, the direction from which the Horlas always came, the direction they fled after wasting and butchering what civilized men had built, what Somelons had protected. She spat and cursed herself. If she hadn't been so weak, if she hadn't let Kio pull her guard down, she would have killed many Horlas last night, maybe even Micar himself, or that slimy cow of a wife, Allukah. Sheryl imagined the thrill she would feel to split open that fat belly of hers like a rotten watermelon.
Once Sheryl's head cleared completely, signs of the Horlas surfaced everywhere. Scalped corpses bristled with the short, featherless shafts that were the arrows of Cular and Mishla. Shattered, bloody jaws had surrendered their teeth for a place in Amurti's necklace. Sheryl shivered, filled with a rage that came too late. She never should have listened to him. She never should have relaxed. If it wasn't for Kio . . .
Kio!
Sheryl's mouth softened as she looked around for the wagon they had hired. There it was, a tall, blue and gold wagon, the only one with springs between the wheels and body. It was a sinful luxury. Kio had picked it because he wanted her to be comfortable. Comfortable. A Somelon warrior. The very idea was ludicrous. Sheryl stepped through the corpses, swatting away the buzzing flies as she went.
Behind the wagon, she found her helmet already half covered by-the sand. One of the eagle's wings on its side had been trampled by a pony's hoof, though the smooth silver surface of the dome was unscratched. Pulling the helmet out of the sand, she pressed it to the back of her neck. The hot metal took some of the tension out of the muscles there.
When her hand touched the flap on the rear of the wagon, Sheryl paused a moment to prepare herself. The last few weeks had worn down her resistance and hopelessly tangled the direction of her life that once was so straight and clear. She was thankful now that she had listened to one of Kio's suggestions and sent her father's body on ahead. Kio had been stronger than her then, had shown her how to rest while he took care of the details of embalming, shipping, and satisfying all the petty laws civilized men placed on everything, even the dead. Kio said it would be too much of a strain on her (as though too much meant anything to a Somelon) to go through the breast-beating ordeal of leading a funeral cortege through the heat of the summer desert. In fact, Sheryl never had any intention of doing such a thing. It was not the Somelon way. Yet, she let Kio run around while she enjoyed the small luxuries of being just a woman for the first time in her life. And thanks to Kio, her father's body would be safe in the roiling meadows of, Varman by now. Had it fallen into the clutches of the Horlas, they would have desecrated the corpse, just to prove they were not afraid of death.
A tug on the flap released a wave of heated air that carried a swarm of flesh-eating horseflies along with it. After the putrid odor, the first thing Sheryl let herself notice was her trunk thrown into a corner, its lid smashed in. It was empty. Her father's tools were gone, and so was the exquisite armor of her mother. The discovery wasn't much of a surprise. Horlas wouldn't leave that kind of treasure behind. There had been a breastplate beaten out of cold steel to hug the contours of her mother's body with the skill and precision of hands that intimately understood both the metal and the body-her father's hands. Covered with a layer of silver and trimmed with gold, a ruby eye tipped each breast, an emerald nose the navel, and at the hips a silver mouth curled into a smile. A beard of leather strips fringed the bottom. There had- been a hawk's-head helmet to match, gauntlets, shin plates, all fashioned with the same, meticulous craft, the same intricate love. A metalsmith his whole life, Sheryl's father's skill was famous far beyond the borders of Philistria. Princes and emirs came from the five corners of the world; from as far east as Abyssinia and as far north as the frozen steppes where the sun never sets, all to have him set their jewels, build impenetrable armor, or to cast the golden death masks of lovers and friends. One day, a Somelon warrior had come down from Mt. Palus and asked him to fashion a new set of armor. It was to celebrate her taking command of the fortress. But she was never to wear it in battle, for, though she was close to seven feet tall and he closer to five, they both fell immediately and irretrievably in love. Yes, it was a storybook romance, and the sweet memory of it had a lot to do with why Sheryl's father had liked Kio so much when they met.
Kio.
It wasn't Kio. Instead, Sheryl found a young Teutite woman. Horlas can usually be relied upon to spare young females and drive them over the desert with the oxen, to satisfy a different kind of hunger, perhaps, both to share the same fatal reward. This particular woman, it seemed, had been pregnant, too weak to make the long trek across the dunes, too swollen to give good pleasure. So she lay there now with a huge hole in her middle where they had cut the baby out. Her treasure was gone. She was as empty as Sheryl's trunk.
The body of the baby was nowhere in sight. It might have been taken as a pathetic trophy or simply thrown out for the hyenas. Or the tales of Horla cannibalism might have some truth in them.
Kio wasn't anywhere inside the wagon either, and outside the air seemed to be clogged with a heavy pollen, a pollen so heavy it worked its way into Sheryl's eyes, irritating her membranes and releasing tears that washed the pollen grains away in small rivulets down her cheeks. She almost looked as if she were crying, though Somelon warriors, of course, never cry. There was no one there to see except Shamask, the sun, the enemy of all Somelons, so he could only be expected to lie about what he saw.
Kio.
Why hadn't the fool listened to her? Sure, he was a successful sculptor who had carved a comfortable life for himself inside the great walled city of Centropolis. It was quite an accomplishment in the world of men, where there were laws and rules and a myth named justice, a dream called security. Everyone knew that was not the real world. It definitely wasn't the unvarnished world Sheryl knew, the world they had built those walls to seal out. Kio had lived in a place where he could survive for seventy years or more without once taking the kinds of risks Sheryl took every day. He should have stayed behind those walls. .Hadn't she told him to? Hadn't she warned him? Hut no, that made too much sense. What good was sense when it had to stand up to a man's inflated ego? She didn't understand him, he said. She was only a woman. Then the blood rushed to her cheeks as quickly as if he had struck her with his fists. She hated him, and perhaps it was that second of hate that had sealed them together forever.
Sheryl knew there was no way she could avoid taking the full blame for what had happened. A Somelon had no excuse for falling under the spell of a man. To Somelons, men were a necessary evil, required to produce more Somelons and, occasionally, a little amusement. They might give an hour's diversion, a couple of twinges of excitement at best, but they were like a song, a dance. Once you sang the song, once you danced the dance, you went on to the next, found a new step, a livelier tune. Singing and dancing were games, unworthy of concentration. So were men. A Somelon's concentration was reserved for one purpose and one purpose only: war. Sheryl's mother had loved her father, and it had destroyed them both. Sheryl couldn't expect to repeat that mistake and go unpunished.
Yet, how could she help herself? How- could any woman resist Kio? Even if Somelons weren't just any women, behind those fortified walls of Centropolis, it was too easy to shut out the lightning bolts of death, the storm of survival raging on the other side. Kio's studio shut out the wind, muffled the thunder until it was just a distant rumble that was easily overwhelmed by the sigh of his chisel slicing a smooth line over the marble. Kio's knives scratched intricate scrawls and details into the stone as if it were soap. Under repeated blows of his hammer, small dusty chips flaked away. She had watched the entire transformation of a shapeless rock into a plump cherub, yet somehow she was shocked when her hand reached out and found the stone cold, hard. Maybe she expected it to yield ever so slightly under the. pressure of her fingertips, as if it were flesh as white as her own. And maybe that's the reason she slid her hand over the statue till it touched his arm, warm, soft, and dusted with powdered rock. Oh, his hands were strong, all right. Used to working stone, they had no trouble working over the firm contours of a Somelon's body. They probed, molded her milk-white flesh into a passion she should never have experienced, for it made her forget that world outside, made her think she could ignore it. She had only been fooling herself. That was brutally clear as soon as they left those protective walls behind. Kio was a gentle fawn in a hostile world of predators. Instead of protecting him, instead of forcing him to stay behind, she had curled up next to him in the back of a Teutite wagon, like a mongrel puppy. It was her fault. All of St. They would all be alive if Sheryl had been on guard.
Rounding the corner of a supply wagon, Sheryl surprised a pack of jackals feasting on a corpse. It was a natural, a common enough sight, these beasts feeding on the extravagance, the greed of men, and it was a sight that normally wouldn't have earned an extra blink of her eye. Yet, it might be Kio's flesh dripping from their bone-crushing jaws. The thought drove her mad. With a single stride, she landed in the center of the pack. Shrieking, she grabbed the neck of a quivering bitch and tore out handfuls of her mangy, striped fur. The wild beasts snapped, their anal sacs secreting the stench of fear. Sheryl growled back, snatching their flea-infested bodies off the ground and flinging them far into the jagged rocks to crash down in a rain of piercing yelps. Sheryl was burning with rage, but as soon as she recognized the feeling, she forced herself to stop.
It took the full measure of her control to instantly freeze the muscles of her body, even as the jackals circled around, nipping at her bare legs, though they didn't yet dare to bite. She had to clear her mind, strip it of these sudden compulsions. Now, more than ever, she had to keep her discipline. When the anger evaporated, so did the jackals, for they recognized the new power that had condensed in her.
With calm patience, Sheryl moved from corpse to rotting corpse, examining each one to see who it was and -how it had died. The jackals' prey was beyond identification, though it was obviously not Kio. In one of the supply wagons, she uncovered a stowaway, with his throat slashed clear to the spine. That was a harsh penalty for the ride the boy had stolen, an exorbitant price. Then again, death is never a bargain.
Sheryl picked over grandmothers with their grey heads clubbed in. There were men and women disemboweled and strangled with their own intestines. Every one of them was missing a right ear. When the search finally wound down to its stomach-surging conclusion, she hadn't located Kio's body. The jackals might have dragged it away, though that wasn't very likely, what with all the other bodies to choose from. So, it appeared that Kio, for whatever reason, had been taken captive. It was not a conclusion that gave Sheryl any real hope for finding him alive. In fact, it was probably the worst of several bad alternatives.
Sheryl walked to the rim of the great Sugar Desert that lay beyond the clogged mouth of the canyon. By this time, the Horlas were on their own side of the scorched plane, secure in their squalid village and fighting over the spoils. Soon, they would be drunk on root wine. Then they would begin to murder one another. It would be a simple matter to take them by surprise, to recover her mother's armor and Kio-if he were still in one piece. A simple matter, were it not for the Sugar Desert standing between them. That was her opponent now, forty miles of desiccated powder with scarcely a weed, barely a boulder strong enough to stand up to the blasting erosion of the wind. Crossing during the heat of the day was impossible. She would have to wait until Shamask, the sun, worked his way under the horizon before she could place a foot on the sand. Her vengeance would have to wait, too. Until then, she would spend the time preparing for the battle that was always waiting for a Somelon warrior.
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