"China Mieville - Iron Council" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mieville China)

There were no nightbirds calling, no glucliches, nothing but the dark vista like a painted background. Cutter was alone on a stage. He thought of dead Ihona. When at
last the lights were close he could see a kraal of heavy houses. He walked into the village as brazen as if he were welcome.
It was empty. The windows were only holes. The big doorways gaped into silent interiors. Each of them was stripped.
The lights were clustered at junctions: head-sized globes of some gently burning lava, cool, and no brighter than a covered lamp. They hung without motion, dead still
in the air. They muttered and their surfaces moiled: arcs of cold pyrosis flared inches from them. Tame night-suns. Nothing moved.
In the empty alleys he spoke to the man he followed. тАЬWhere are you then?тАЭ His voice was very careful.
When he went back to the cliff, Cutter saw a light on its edge, a lantern, that moved slowly. He knew it was not his companionsтАЩ.

Elsie wanted to see the empty village, but Cutter was firm that they had no time, they had to see the other lights, to see if there was a trail. тАЬYou picked up something,тАЭ
he reminded her. тАЬWe better see. We need some fucking guidance.тАЭ
Fejh was better, his water renewed, but he was still afraid. тАЬVodyanoi ainтАЩt supposed to be here,тАЭ he said. тАЬIтАЩm going to die here, Cutter.тАЭ
Midmorning, Cutter looked back, pointed into the brightness. Someone, some speck figure, sat on horseback on the shelf they had reached the previous night. A woman
or man in a wide-brimmed hat.
тАЬWeтАЩre being followed. ItтАЩs got to be the whisperer.тАЭ Cutter waited for a mutter in his ear, but there was nothing. Throughout the day and in the early night the rider
tracked them, coming no closer. It angered them, but they could do nothing.
The second village was like the first, Cutter thought, but he was wrong. The sables wheezed and slowed through deserted squares and under the sputtering light-globes
and found a long wall all bullet-scarred, its mortar punctured and stained with sap. The travellers dismounted, stood in the cold remains of violence. In the townshipтАЩs
outlands Cutter saw tilled land; and then he felt the moment still, realised it was not a field but was disturbed in another way, turned over and charred. It was the topsoil
on a grave. It was a mass grave.
Breaking the soil like the first shoots of a grotesque harvest were bones. They were abrupt and blacked by fire, fibrous like dense wood. The bones of cactus-people.
Cutter stood among the dead, above their moulding vegetable-flesh. Time came back. He felt it shudder.
Planted scarecrow in the middle was a degraded corpse. A human man. He was naked, slumped, upheld by spikes that pinned him to a tree. Javelins pierced him. One
emerged point-first from his sternum. It had been forced up his anus and through him. His scrotum was torn off. There was a scab of blood on his throat. He was
leathered by sun and insects worked on him.
The travellers stared like worshippers at their totem. When after many seconds Pomeroy moved he still looked carefully, as if it would be a disrespect to break the dead
manтАЩs gaze.
тАЬLook,тАЭ he said. He swallowed. тАЬAll cactacae.тАЭ He poked at the earth, turned up bits of the dead. тАЬAnd then thereтАЩs him. What in JabberтАЩs name happened here? The
war ainтАЩt reached here . . .тАЭ
Cutter looked at the corpse. It was not very bloody. Even between its legs there was only a little gore.
тАЬHe was already gone,тАЭ Cutter whispered. He was awed by the brutal tableau. тАЬThey done this to a dead man. After they buried the others.тАЭ Below the corpseтАЩs chin
was not a clot but blooded metal. Cutter looked away while he worked it from the dead manтАЩs neck.
It was a tiny escutcheon. It was a badge of the New Crobuzon Militia.

The dangling man crossed the water. His hair and clothes gusted in his motion. The Meagre Sea chopped scant feet beneath him, and spume spattered his trousers.
A body like a bolt breached abruptly, a swordfish arcing up beside him, reaching high enough for him to touch at the keystone of its leap then curving down to stab
back under with its body-spear. It kept up with him. It kept pace with his uncanny motion.
When it came up, when it vaulted into the sun, it caught the dangling manтАЩs eye with its big sideways stare. Something dark clutched its dorsal fin. Something that
shifted and dug under its fishтАЩs skin.

CHAPTER FOUR
They went off-map, toward the third set of lights. Beyond them was a wall of stone like spinal scales, through which they must find a way.
Cutter held the blood-rusted badge. He felt sick, knowing the militia were ahead of them. We could be too late.
There were sinkholes full of water, though it was dirty stuff. Fejh replenished his barrel, but his skin was scarring. They shot little jackrabbits and slow birds. They
passed antelopes, went cautiously by coveys of tusked hogs the size of horses.
Cutter felt as if the path they left was an infection in the land. At dawn on their third day out from the cruciform militiaman, they approached the last village. And as
they came nearer the sun crested and they were washed in roseate light and something moved, that they had thought a rock spur or a thinning tree.
They cried out. Their mounts stumbled.
A giant came at them, a cactus figure far greater than they had seen before. Cactacae stood seven, eight feet tall, but this one was more than double that. It was like an
elemental, something base and made of the land, the grassland walking.
It jerked on twisted hips, its vast legs and toeless stump-feet ricketed. It swayed as if it would fall. Its green skin was split and healed many times. Its spines were finger-