"Paul McAuley - The Book of Confluence 02 - Ancients of Days" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

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Paul J. McAuley




The Ancients of Days


Chapter One
THE WHISPERERS
PANDARAS ENTERED THE shadowy arena of the Basilica just as one half of the defense
force charged at the other. Tamora led the point of the attacking wedge, screaming fearsomely.
Yama ran up and down behind the double rank of the defending line and shouted at his
thralls to stand firm.
The two sides met with a rattle of padded staves against round arm shields. Shadows shifted
wildly as fireflies swooped overhead like a storm of sparks. For a moment it seemed that the
attack must fail, but then one of the thralls in the defending line gave ground to Tamora's
remorseless blows. Instead of closing the gap as the man went down in the press, the first rank
wavered and broke, stumbling backward into the second. Yama shouted the order to regroup, but
his thralls fell over each other or simply dropped their shields and staves and ran, and the wedge
formation of the attacking force dissolved as thralls began to chase each other around the
Basilica.
In the middle of the confusion, Tamora threw down her stave in disgust, and Yama blew and
blew on his whistle until everyone stopped running. Pandaras came toward them, trotting over the
pattern of chalked lines Tamora had carefully drawn on the marble floor that morning. His two
fireflies spun above his small sleek head. He said cheerfully, "Did they do something wrong? I
thought it was very energetic."
"You should be in the kitchen with the rest of the pan scourers," Tamora said, and went off
to round up the thralls so that she could tell them exactly what they had done wrong. Her own
fireflies seemed to have caught some of her anger; they flared with bright white light and whirled
around her head like hornets sprung in defense of their nest. Her long queue of red hair gleamed
like a rope of fresh blood. She wore a plastic corselet, much scratched and scored, and a short
skirt of overlapping strips of scuffed leather that left her powerfully muscled legs mostly bare.
Pandaras said, "They are armed with sticks, master. Is that part of your plan?"
"We do not dare give them proper weapons yet," Yama told the boy. Like the thralls, he
wore only a breechclout.
The floor was cold and gritty under his bare feet, but he was sweating in the chill air, and his
blood sang. He could feel it thrilling under his skin. His vigorous black hair was bushed up by the
bandage around his forehead. A ceramic disc, of the kind believed to have been used as coins in
the Age of Enlightenment, hung from his neck on a leather thong. At his back, his knife hung in
its goatskin sheath from a leather harness that went over his shoulders and fastened across his
chest.
He said, "We had them at drill most of the day. You should see how they keep in step!"
Pandaras looked up at his master, affecting concern. "How is your head, master? Is the
wound making you feverish? You seem to think an army of polishers and floor sweepers, armed