"George R. R. Martin - Ice and Fire 4 - Arms of the Kraken" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

He growled a brusque command, and his drowned men seized the dead boy by his arms and legs to carry him above the
tideline. The priest followed, naked but for a sealskin clout that covered his private parts. Goosefleshed and dripping he
splashed back onto land, across cold wet sand and sea-scoured pebbles. One of his drowned men handed him a robe of
heavy roughspun dyed in mottled greens and blues and greys, the colors of the sea and the


Drowned God. Aeron donned the robe and pulled his hair free. Black and wet, that hair; no blade had touched it since the sea
had raised him up. ll draped his shoulders like a ragged, ropy cloak, and fell down past his waist. Aeron wove strands of
seaweed through it, and through his tangled, uncut beard.


His drowned men formed a circle around Ihe dead boy, praying. Norjen worked his arms whilst Rus knell astride him.
pumping on his chest, but all moved aside for Aeron. He pried apart the boy's cold lips with his fingers, and gave Emmond
the kiss of life, and agait and again, until the sea cam┬л tfirehinji from his mouth. The boy began to cough and spit, and his
eyes blinked open, full of fear.


Another one returned It was a sign of the Drowned God's favor, men said. Every other priest lost a man from time to lime,
even Tarle the Thrice-Drowned, who had once been thought so holy that he was picked to crown a king. But never Aeron
Greyjoy. He was the Damphair, who had seen the god's own watery halls and returned to tell of it. "Rise," he told the
sputtering boy, as he slapped him on his naked back. "You have drowned and been returned lo us. What is dead can never
die."


"But rises." The boy coughed violently, bringing up more water. "Rises


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again." Every word was bought with pain, but that was the way of the world; a man must fight to live. "Rises again." Emmond
staggered to his feet. "Harder. And stronger."


"You belong to the god now," Aeron told him. The other drowned men gathered round, and gave him each a punch and a
kiss to welcome him to brotherhood. One helped him don a roughspun robe of mottled blue and green and grey. Another
presented him with a driftwood cudgel. "You belong to the sea now, so the sea has armed you,"


Aeron said. "We pray that you shall wield your cudgel fiercely, against all the enemies of our god."


Only then did the priest turn to the three riders, watching from their saddles. "Have you come to be drowned, my lords?"


The Sparr coughed. "I was drowned as a boy," he said, "and my son upon his name day."


Aeron snorted. That Steffarion Sparr had been given to the Drowned God soon after birth he had no doubt. He knew the