"Sterling E. Lanier - Hieros 01 - Hiero's Journey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lanier Sterling E)

five millennia and more. But it was a good weapon and he loved its weight.
He also carried a short, heavy spear, a weapon with a hickory shaft and
ten-inch, leaf-shaped steel blade. A crossbar of steel went through the base
of the blade at right angles, creating what any ancient student of weaponry
would have recognized at once as a boar spear. The cross guard was designed to
prevent any animal (or human) from forcing its way up the spear shaft, even
when impaled by the spear's point. This was not an old weapon, but had been
made by the Abbey armory for Hiero when he had completed his Man Tests. At his
saddlebow was holstered a third weapon, wooden stock forward. This was a
thrower, a muzzle-loading, smooth-bore carbine, whose inch-and-a-half bore
fired six-inch-long explosive rockets. The weapon was hideously expensive, the
barrel being made of beryllium copper, and its small projectiles had to be
hand-loaded by the small, private factory which produced them. It was a
graduation present from his father and had cost twenty robes of prime marten
fur. When his stock of projectiles was exhausted, the thrower was useless, but
he carried fifty of them in his pack; few creatures alive could take a rocket
shell and still keep coming. A six-inch, two-edged knife, bone-handled, hung
in his belt scabbard:
His clothes were leather, beautifully dressed tan deerskin, very
close-fitting, almost as soft as cloth and far more durable, In his leather
saddlebags were packed a fur jacket, gloves, and folding snowshoes, as well as
food, some small pieces of copper and silver for trading, and his Exorcist's
gear. On his feet were knee boots of brown deerskin, with triple-strength
heels and soles of hardened, layered leather for walking. The circled cross
and sword of the Abbeys gleamed in silver on his breast, a heavy thong
supporting the medallion. And on his bronzed, square face were painted the
marks of his rank in the Abbey service, a yellow maple leaf on the forehead
and, under it, two snakes coiled about a spear shaft, done in green. These
marks were very ancient indeed and were always put on first by the head of the
Abbey, the Father Superior himself, when the rank was first achieved. Each
morning, Hiero renewed them from tiny jars carried in his saddlebags.
Throughout the entire North, they were recognized and honored, except by those
humans
S HIERO'S JOURNEY
beyond the law and the unnatural creatures spawned by The Death, the
Leemutes,* who were mankind's greatest enemy.
Hiero was thirty-six and unmarried, although most men his age were the heads
of large families. Yet he did not want to become abbot or other member of the
hierarchy and end up as an administrator, he was sure of that. When teased
about it, he was apt to remark, with an immobile face, that no woman, or
women, could interest him for long enough to perform the ceremony. But he was
no celibate. The celibate priesthood was a thing of the dead past. Priests
were expected to be part of the world, to struggle, to work, to share in all
worldly activities, and there was nothing worldlier than sex. The Abbeys were
not even sure if Rome, the ancient legendary seat of their faith, still
existed, somewhere far over the Eastern Ocean. But even if it did, their
long-lost traditional obedience to its Pontiff was gone forever, gone with the
knowledge of how to communicate across so vast a distance and many other
things as well.
Birds sang in massed chonises as Hiero rode along in the afternoon sunlight.