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

The sky was cloudless and the August heat not uncomfortable. The morse ambled
at exactly the pace he had learned brought no goad and not one instant faster.
Klootz was fond of his master and knew exactly how far Hiero could be pushed
before he lost his patience. The bull's great ears fanned the air in ceaseless
search for news, recording the movements of small creatures as much as a
quarter of a mile away in the wood. But before the long, drooping muzzle of
the steed and the rider's abstracted eye, the dusty road lay empty, spotted
with fresh dung and churned up by the buffer herd, whose passage could still
be heard ahead of them in the distance.
This was virgin timber through which the road ran. Much of the Kandan
continent was unsettled, much more utterly unknown. Settlements tended to
radiate from one of the great Abbeys, for adventurous souls had a habit of
disappearing. The pioneer settlements which were unplanned and owed their
existence to an uncontrolled desire for new land had a habit of mysteriously
falling out of communication. Then, one day,
*Leemute: corruption of ancient words, "Lethal Mutation." Now, in altered
meaning, a creature lethal to humans, rather than to itself.
THE SIGN OF THE FISHHOOK 9
some woodsman, or perhaps a priest sent by the nearest Abbey, would find a
cluster of moldering houses surrounded by overgrown fields. There was
occasional muttering that the Abbeys discouraged settlers and tried to prevent
new opening up of the woods, but no one ever dreamed that the priesthood was
in any way responsible for the vanished people. The Council of Abbots had
repeatedly warned against careless pioneering into unknown areas, but, beyond
the very inner disciplines taught to the priesthood, the Abbeys had few
secrets and never interfered in everyday affairs. They tried to build new
Abbeys as fast as possible, thus creating new enclaves of civilization around
which settlements could rally, but there were only so many people in the
world, and few of these made either good priests or soldiers. It was slow
work.
As Hiero rode, his mnemonic training helped him automatically to catalogue for
future reference everything he saw. The towering jackpines, the great
white-barked aspens, the olive palmetto heads, a glimpse of giant grouse
through the trees, all were of interest to the Abbey files. A priest learned
early that exact knowledge was the only real weapon against a savage and
uncertain world.
Morse and rider were now eight days beyond the easternmost Abbey of the Metz
Republic, and this particular road ran far to the south of the main east-west
artery to distant Otwah and was little known. Hiero had picked it after
careful thought, because he was going both south and east himself, and also
because using it would supply new data for the Abbey research centers.
His thoughts reverted to his mission. He was only one of the six Abbey
volunteers. He had no illusions about the dangers involved in what he was
doing. The world was full of savage beasts and more savage men, those who
lived beyond any law and made pacts with darkness and the Leemutes. And the
Lee-mutes themselves, what of them? Twice he had fought for his life against
them, the last time two years back. A pack of fifty hideous, apelike
creatures, hitherto unknown, riding bareback on giant, brindled dog-things,
had attacked a convoy on the great western highway while he had commanded the
guard. Despite all his forelooking and alertness, and the fact that he had a