"Walter M. Miller - The Lost Masters - Volume 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

sleeve. The pilgrim had become indistinguishable from the Archenemy, for a moment, in the somewhat
sun-dazed mind of the novice.
This surprise attack on the Powers of Darkness and Temptation produced no immediate
supernatural results, but the natural results seemed to appear ex opere operate. The pilgrim-Beelzebub
failed to explode into sulfurous smoke, but he made gargling sounds, turned a bright shade of red, and
lunged at Francis with a bloodcurdling yell. The novice kept tripping on his tunic as he fled from flailing of
the pilgrimтАЩs spiked staff, and he escaped without nail holes only because the pilgrim had forgotten his
sandals. The old manтАЩs limping charge became a skippity hop. He seemed suddenly mindful of scorching
rocks under his bare soles. He stopped and became preoccupied. When Brother Francis glanced over
his shoulder, he gained the distinct impression that the pilgrimтАЩs retreat to his cool spot was being
accomplished by the feat of hopping along on the tip of one great toe.
Ashamed of the odor of cheese that lingered on his fingertips, and repenting his irrational exorcism,
the novice slunk back to his self-appointed labors in the old ruins, while the pilgrim cooled his feet and
satisfied his wrath by flinging an occasional rock at the youth whenever the latter moved into view among
the rubble mounds. When his arm at last grew weary, he flung more feints than stones, and merely
grumbled over his bread and cheese when Francis ceased to dodge.
The novice was wandering to and fro throughout the ruins, occasionally staggering toward some
focal point of his work with a rock, the size of his own chest, locked in a painful embrace. The pilgrim
watched him select a stone, estimate its dimensions in hand-spans, reject it, and carefully select another,
to be pried free from the rock jam of the rubble, to be hoisted by Francis and stumblingly hauled away.
He dropped one stone after a few paces, and, suddenly sitting, placed his head between his knees in an
apparent effort to avoid fainting. After panting awhile, he arose again and finished by rolling the stone
end-over-end toward its destination. He continued this activity while the pilgrim, no longer glaring, began
to gape.
The sun blazed its midday maledictions upon the parched land, laying its anathema on all moist
things. Francis labored on in spite of the heat.
When the traveler had washed down the last of his sandy bread and cheese with a few squirts from
his waterskin, he slipped feet into sandals, arose with a grunt, and hobbled through the ruins toward the
site of the noviceтАЩs labors. Noticing the old manтАЩs approach, Brother Francis scurried to a safe distance.
Mockingly, the pilgrim brandished his spiked cudgel at him, but seemed more curious about the youthтАЩs
masonry than he seemed eager for revenge. He paused to inspect the noviceтАЩs burrow.
There, near the east boundary of the ruins, Brother Francis had dug a shallow trench, using a stick
for a hoe and hands for a shovel. He had, on the first day of Lent, roofed it over with a heap of brush,
and used the trench by night as refuge from the desertтАЩs wolves. But as the days of his fasting grew in
number, his presence had increased his spoor in the vicinity until the nocturnal lupine prowlers seemed
unduly attracted to the area of the ruins and even scratched around his brush heap when the fire was
gone.
Francis had first attempted to discourage their nightly digging by increasing the thickness of the
brush pile over his trench, and by surrounding it with a ring of stones set tightly in a furrow. But on the
previous night, something had leaped to the top of his brush pile and howled while Francis lay shivering
below, whereupon he had determined to fortify the burrow, and, using the first ring of stones as a
foundation, had begun to build a wall. The wall tilted inward as it grew; but since the enclosure was
roughly an oval in shape, the stones in each new layer crowded against adjacent stones to prevent an
inward collapse. Brother Francis now hoped that by a careful selection of rocks and a certain mount of
juggling, dirt-tamping, and pebble-wedging, he would be able to complete a dome. And, a single span of
unbuttressed arch, somehow defying gravity, stood there over the burrow as a token of this ambition.
Brother Francis yelped like a puppy when the pilgrim rapped curiously at this arch with his staff.
Solicitous for his abode, the novice had drawn nearer during the pilgrimтАЩs inspection. The pilgrim
answered his yelp with a flourish of the cudgel and a bloodthirsty howl. Brother Francis promptly tripped
on the hem of his tunic and sat down. The old man chuckled.