"Raymond Kaminski - The Amazons of Somelon v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kaminski Raymond)

"Why, Kryl. You're jealous of him."

She might have pinched him the way he winced. All the fight went out $of him. He slumped low, deflated.

"It's probably true. I have no claim on you. We don't even share the same blood."

She crept up next to him and gathered the withered, gray head into her arms, pressing his face between her steel-sheathed breasts. Kryl kissed one of those pointed cones, and his lips shivered from the cold he tasted. She showed no sign that she noticed.

"All men are children," Sheryl murmured, stroking the place where his ear had been.

"And you do your best to keep us that way."

"Certainly. You'd have it no other way. Even my father. My mother was gone, then you went away, and still he refused to leave our little but in the Varman Valley. The Horlas came back, again and again, but they couldn't drive him away. Sometimes, I think he half expected my mother to ride in one day and chase them away. Then, everything would be as it was. All those nights we spent huddled together under the floor of the hut, listening to the Horlas smashing and looting the few things we had. I don't know why they bothered to come back. It didn't seem worth the effort."

"The Horlas don't need an excuse to destroy. They enjoy it so."

"I guess you're right. We would crawl out and start rebuilding, then the Horlas would come tearing back to knock it down again. The whole thing made no sense.

To me it was a stupid game without rules, though I was never cruel enough to attack my father's hopes."

"Your armor is cold," Kryl snuggled close.

"Not nearly as cold as the grave, old man." Sheryl transferred his head to her lap. He rubbed his stubbly face against the smooth skin of her legs, like a cat.

"Even after I grew strong enough to chase the Horlas away, he wouldn't let me face them. I almost went mad when he made me promise not to fight them. Hiding in the cellar while I heard them smashing and laughing, just inches away, I could have screamed! Why, I even accused him of protecting the Horlas. That was a hard vow to keep."

"Yet, you're after the Horlas now."

"My father is dead. He took the vow with him. Others have replaced it. You see, after one particularly vicious raid, we crawled out to survey the ruins, to end the agony of the animals they tortured. I'd already begun sifting through the smoking debris, looking for anything the Horlas might have missed, when, with a great sigh, he ordered me to stop. We packed his tools, my mother's armor, and we made the trip to Centropolis. It was there I met Kio."

"Kio? The man?"

"The way you say `man' makes it sound downright degenerate. You're a traitor to your own sex." She tried to laugh. When it didn't come, she punished him with a sharp tug of his hair. Kryl yelled.

"Ouch!" He rolled out of her lap into the dust, where he laid without moving.

"I am loyal only to my friends, and you happen to be the last one I have left. So I'll tell you again. Let the man go!"

"How can I make you understand? Kio isn't an ordinary man. Even my father called him `son' the first time they met."

"Son!" He snickered, fingering the stumps that had once been his legs. "A son is a poor man's feeble bid for immortality, a petty vanity, for the world forgets every man sooner or later. Every man wants a son, just as every man hates to die."

"You mean my father was disappointed when I was born?"

"Don't be ridiculous. A daughter is a miniature goddess. But a man can relax with a son, knowing the child has so much to learn, so little time to do it. Then the father is the god, at least till the son grows big enough to challenge him. Women are born wise. Their bodies change, but they keep that innate perception of life men never really grasp. A man has to struggle, learn from his mistakes. It takes many years before he can reason, more before he can survive on his own. It's a contest that leaves him exhausted, and he can't afford to rest. He's always scrambling to fill the gaps, plug the leaks. All the while, there is a woman sitting demurely, waiting, wondering what took him so long to achieve so little. Why do you think we're all awkward and embarrassed when we stand in front of a woman? With a Somelon, the whole thing becomes a tragedy. A man fools himself till he believes he is worthy of an ordinary woman, and she, in her wisdom, lets him believe it. But trying to earn a. Somelon is like trying to scale a sheer wall of granite with your bare hands. You only get so far before you slip. Then it's all straight down."

"Kio is a sculptor. He works wonders with granite."

"Don't make light of it, Sheryl. Somelons destroy men."