"Mary Renault - Greece 1 - The King Must Die" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

voices. As I struck out with the current to the open sea, I said within me, "If I am the god's he will look
after me. If not I shall drown, and I do not care."

Beyond the narrows and the headland, the strait opened to the sea. Then over on Kalauria I heard music
and saw torches weaving; and boylike I wanted to go and see. I turned, and struck for the island shore;
but the lights grew smaller whenever I looked. I saw I might truly die; and I wanted life.

The current had borne me easily; but when I fought it, it was cruel and strong. I began to be tired, and
cold; my leather breeches dragged at my thighs, my wet belt pinched my breathing. A wave slapped me
head-on, and I went under.

I could not right myself; I seemed to sink to the very bottom of the sea. My head and my chest felt
bursting. I thought, "The god rejects me. I have lived for a lie and there is nothing left. Oh that I could be
dead without dying! It is hard to die, harder than I know." My eyes flashed and saw pictures: my mother
in her bath; a hunchback the children laughed at; the shrine in the noon stillness; the youths in their
horse-dance stamping for the god; and the sacrifice, my grandfather beckoning with his bloodstained
hand. And then, just as when I was seven years old, I heard within me the sea-surge, bearing me up and
on. It seemed to say to me, "Be quiet, my son, and let me carry you. Am I not strong enough?"

My fear left me. I ceased to struggle, and my face broke water. I lay on the sea, as easy as the lost child
the father finds on the mountain, and brings home in his arms. Once round the point, the current always
sets for land again. But I should never have lived to remember it but for Poseidon, Shepherd of Ships.

In the hills' shelter the sea was calm and the air gentle. Climbing to the torches I lost the last of the chill. I
felt light and lucky, full of the god. Soon I saw light through apple leaves, and dancers whirling; there
were pipes and singing and the thud of feet.

It was a little village feast, on a slope of orchards. The torches were fixed on poles around the floor, for
the torch-dance was over. The men were doing the Dance of the Quails, with feathered masks and
wings, wheeling and hobbling and dipping and giving quail-calls; the women stood round singing the song,
clapping and tapping their feet. When I came out into the torchlight, they broke off singing; and the tallest
girl, the village beauty the men were whistling and calling to, cried out, "Here is the Kouros of Poseidon!
Look at his hair all wet from the sea!" Then she laughed. But when I looked, I saw she was not mocking
me.

After the dancing we ran away, and lay hidden close in the deep wet grass among the apple trees, stifling
each other's laughter when one of her suitors came crashing and roaring past. Afterwards she held me
away from her; but it was only while she got out a windfall from under her back.

That was my first girl, and I had my first war not long after. The men of Hermione came north over the
hills, and lifted thirty head of cattle. When I heard my uncles shouting to each other, and calling for their
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horses and their arms, I slipped away and helped myself from the armory and the stable. I stole out by
the postern, and joined them up on the hill road. Diokles thought it a good joke. It was the last he ever
laughed at; one of the raiders speared him. When he was dead, I rode after the man who did it, and
dragged him from his horse across the neck of mine, and killed him with my dagger. My grandfather had