"George R. R. Martin - And Seven Times Never Kill Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

AND SEVEN TIMES
NEVER KILL MAN
George R.R.Martin

Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they
need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!
тАФRudyard Kipling



Outside the walls the Jaenshi children hung, a row of small gray-furred
bodies still and motionless at the ends of long ropes. The oldest among
them, obviously, had been slaughtered before hanging; here a headless
male swung upside down, the noose around the feet, while there dangled
the blast-burned carcass of a female. But most of them, the dark hairy
infants with the wide golden eyes, most of them had simply been hung.
Toward dusk, when the wind came swirling down out of the ragged hills,
the bodies of the lighter children would twist at the ends of their ropes
and bang against the city walls, as if they were alive and pounding for
admission.
But the guards on the walls paid the thumping no mind as they walked
their relentless rounds, and the rust-streaked metal gates did not open.
"Do you believe in evil?" Arik neKrol asked Jannis Ryther as they looked
down on the City of the Steel Angels from the crest of a nearby hill. Anger
was written across every line of his flat yellow-brown face, as he squatted
among the broken shards of what once had been a Jaenshi worship
pyramid.
"Evil?" Ryther murmured in a distracted way. Her eyes never left the
redstone walls below, where the dark bodies of the children were outlined
starkly. The sun was going down, the fat red globe that the Steel Angels
called the Heart of Bakkalon, and the valley beneath them seemed to swim
in bloody mists.
 "Evil," neKrol repeated. The trader was a short, pudgy man, his features
decidedly mongoloid except for the flame-red hair that fell nearly to his
waist. "It is a religious concept, and I am not a religious man. Long ago,
when I was a very child growing up on ai-Emerel, I decided that there was
no good or evil, only different ways of thinking." His small, soft hands felt
around in the dust until he had a large, jagged shard that filled his fist. He
stood and offered it to Ryther. "The Steel Angels have made me believe in
evil again," he said.
She took the fragment from him wordlessly and turned it over in her
hands. Ryther was much taller than neKrol. and much thinner; a hard
bony woman with a long face, short black hair, and eyes without
expression. The sweat-stained coveralls she wore hung loosely on her spare
frame.
"Interesting," she said finally, after studying the shard for several
minutes. It was as hard and smooth as glass, but stronger; colored a
translucent red, yet so very dark it was almost black. "A plastic?" she
asked, throwing it back to the ground.