"Paul McAuley - The Book of Confluence 01 - Child of the River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

an anchorite.
The man stood with his back to the shrine, brandishing his
staff. Its metal-shod point flicked back and forth like a watchful
eye. Lud and Lob yelled and threw stones and clods of
dirt at the anchorite but stayed out of the staff's striking




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range. The twins were swaggering bullies who believed that
they ruled the children of the town. Most especially, they
picked on those few children of bloodlines not their own.
Yama had been chased by them a decad ago, when he had
been returning to the peel-house after visiting Derev, but he
had easily lost them in the ruins outside the town.
"We'll find you later, little fish, " they had shouted cheerfully
. They had been drinking, and one of them had slapped
his head with the empty bladder and cut a clumsy little dance.
"We always finish our business, " he had shouted. "Little
fish, little fish, come out now. Be like a man."
Yama had chosen to stay hidden. Lud and Lob had
scrawled their sign on a crumbling. wall and pissed at its
base, but after beating about the bushes in a desultory fashion
they had gown bored and wandered off.
Now, crouching with Derev and Ananda in a thicket of
chayote vine, Yama wondered what he should do. The anchorite
was a tall man with a wild black mane and wilder beard.
He was barefoot, and dressed in a crudely stitched robe of
metallic-looking cloth. He dodged most of the stones thrown
at him, but one had struck him on the head; blood ran down
his forehead and he mechanically wiped it from his eyes with
his wrist. Sooner or later, he would falter, and Lud and Lob
would pounce.
Derev whispered, "We should fetch the militia."
"I don't think it's necessary, " Ananda said.
At that moment, a stone struck the anchorite's elbow and
the point of his staff dipped. Roaring with glee, Lob and Lud
ran in from either side and knocked him to the ground. The
anchorite surged up, throwing one of the twins aside, but the




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other clung to his back and the second knocked the anchorite