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

been angry at my going without leave; but he did not rebuke me after, saying it was only proper I should
avenge Diokles, who had always been good to me. I had been so angry I could not even feel I was killing
my first man; only that I wanted him dead, like a wolf or a boar. We got back all the cattle before
nightfall, except for two which fell down a steep place on the mountain.

A few months after this, the time of King Minos' tribute came round again.

The tax goods were gathering at the harbor: hides and oil, wool and copper and boarhound bitches in
whelp. People looked sour; but I had other trouble. I knew this was when the small boys were taken out
from the tall ones, and sent to the hills to hide. I made offerings to Poseidon, and Zeus, and the Mother,
praying in secret to be spared this shame. But soon after, my grandfather said to me, "Theseus, when you
are up in the mountains, if there are broken necks, or cattle stolen, I am telling you now you will be the
first to answer for it. There is your warning."

My heart reproached the thankless gods. "Must I go, sir? Surely it's beneath the house, for me to hide
away. They would never take me; they can't think so meanly of us as that." He looked at me testily.
"They will think you are just the build of boy they like for the bull-dance; that and nothing more. Don't
talk when you know nothing." I thought, "Well, that is blunt enough."

"Who is King Minos," I said, "to treat kings' houses like a victor? Why do we pay him? Why not go to
war?"

He tapped his fingers on his belt. "Come back later," he said, "when I have less to do. Meanwhile, we
pay Minos tribute because he commands the sea. If he stopped the tin-ships we could make no bronze,
and should have to make swords of stone, like the first Earth Men. As for war, he has ships enough to
bring five thousand men here in a day. Remember also that he keeps the seaways clear of pirates, who
would cost us more than he does."

"A tax is all very well," I said. "But to take people, that is treating Hellenes like slaves." "All the more
reason to avoid it. In Corinth and Athens, likely boys were allowed to be seen; now other kingdoms
know better. To talk of a war with Crete, as if it were a cattle raid! You try my patience. Behave yourself
in the mountains. And next time I send for you, wash your face."

All this was bitter to my new-found manhood. "We ought to hide some girls too," I said. "Can we pick
our own?" He gave me a hard look. "It's a young dog that barks over his bone. You have leave to go."

It was my bitter hour, when the big lads swaggered free in Troizen, while the small and slender, bear-led
by two unwilling House Barons, were led away. Even though the cripples and the sickly stayed in Troizen
too, we all felt disgraced for ever. Five days we were in the mountains, sleeping in a barn, hunting and
climbing and fist-fighting and coursing hares on foot, a plague to our guardians, trying to prove to
ourselves we were good for something. Someone got an eye pecked by a raven, and one or two of us,
as we learned later, got sons or daughters; they are wild but willing, those girls in the back hills. Then
someone rode out on muleback to say the Cretans had sailed for Tiryns, and we could come home.

Time passed, and I grew taller, but never overtook the others; and the wrestling court was a place of
grief to me, for there were boys a year younger who could lift me off the ground. I no longer hoped to be
seven feet tall; I wanted a foot even of six, and I was rising sixteen.
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html