"John Norman - Telnarian Histories 01 - The Chieftain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

"In this year war was carried on with the Aatii."

If one listens carefully, perhaps one can hear, beneath this laconic sentence, the ships, the roar of
the engines, the bursting of the shells, the blare of trumpets, the hiss of weaponry, the running
feet, the screams, even the clash of steel. Not all entries in the Annals, of course, are so terse. I
have chosen this one because, you see, my story begins in the year referred to in this particular
entry, the year, one of several, actually, in which war was carried on with the Aatii.

I have wondered sometimes why men tell stories. I suspect they have always done so. In the
beginning perhaps they danced them, or drew them. A man is, after all, a story-telling animal.
One needs no reason to tell a story, or to sing. Those are nice things about stories, and about
singing. Perhaps the story, the song, like seeing, and thinking and breathing, if you like, is its
own justification, its own reason.

I shall, in what follows, speak in simple, familiar terms, for these are the terms in the light of
which we live and understand ourselves, and the worlds, both those without and those within. I
shall ignore then the terrors of distance, the puzzles and paradoxes of time, her crevices, the
clashing and grinding of her walls, the opening and closing, like the coming and going of tides,
of her gates. Though these figure in our story they have little to do with it.

It is raining outside. Water runs down the casement. It gathers on the sill.

I think the vastness of it is what is most frightening. Perhaps, in the corner of some droplet of
water, perhaps even one at hand, one lingering on the sill of the casement, some tiny,
infinitesimal creature, one in which has just arisen the first glimmering of consciousness,
trembles at the awesomeness of his universe. And perhaps we, ourselves, and all our time and
space, and our history, and all the vastness of our own universe, those plenitudes before which
we tremble, lie only upon another sill, inhabiting merely another droplet, somewhere. But the
magnitude of man is not measured in the quantity of his being, that he lingers for such and such a
time in such and such a place, a small time, in a small place, or that his frame contains so many
cubits or less, but in his heart and soul, as tiny, as foul and dark as they may be. He, in his tiny
place and time, may do deeds, and in these deeds he stands among the loftiest, farthest of stars. A
smile, a gesture, an upraised fist, a laugh, a song, with these things, seemingly so small in
themselves, he exceeds dimensions, he challenges all time and space.

Greatness, you see, is not measured in size. The magnitude of man is not measured in cubits.

We must understand that, in the dark and troubled times, the billions of worlds met, in the course
of their turnings, their billions of mornings and evenings, and seasons came and went, as usual,
and vegetations waxed and waned, as was their wont, and so, too, men, and other creatures,
some like men and some not so like them, came to be, and suffered and died. Those times, you
see, were not so different from our own.
I have not written this history to edify or instruct. I have not written it to praise or blame. I have
not even written it, really, to explain, or understand, for who can, truly, understand such things.
My purpose, rather, is a simple one, merely to tell what happened.

Early in the dark and troubled times the wings of the Telnarian empire still spread over galaxies.
My story begins on the provincial world of Terennia, in an arena.