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

my grandfather with the crimson cleaver. I looked up; but Diokles was watching the death-throe, leaning
easily on his spear. I met only the empty eye-slits of the leopardskin, and the arm-snake's jewelled stare.

My grandfather dipped a cup into the offering bowl, and poured the wine upon the ground. I seemed to
see blood stream from his hand. The smell of dressed hide from Diokles' shield, and the man's smell of
his body, came to me mixed with the smell of death. My grandfather gave the server the cup, and
beckoned. Diokles shifted his spear to his shield arm, and took my hand. "Come," he said. "Father wants
you. You have to be dedicated now."

I thought, "So was the King Horse." The bright day rippled before my eyes, which tears of grief and
terror blinded. Diokles swung round his shield on its shoulder sling to cover me like a house of hide, and
wiped his hard young hand across my eyelids. "Behave," he said. "The people are watching. Come,
where's the warrior? It's only blood."

He took the shield away; and I saw the people staring.

At the sight of all their eyes, memories came back to me. "Gods' sons fear nothing," I thought. "Now they
will know, one way or the other." And though within me was all dark and crying, yet my foot stepped
forward.

Then it was that I heard a sea-sound in my ears; a pulse and a surging, going with me, bearing me on. I
heard it then for the first time.

I moved with the wave, as if it broke down a wall before me; and Diokles led me forward. At least, I
know that I was led; by him, or one who took his shape as the Immortals may. And I know that having
been alone, I was alone no longer.

My grandfather dipped his finger in the blood of the sacrifice, and made the sign of the trident on my
brow. Then he and old Kannadis took me under the cool thatch that roofed the holy spring, and dropped
in a votive for me, a bronze bull with gilded horns. When we came out, the priests had cut off the god's
portion from the carcass, and the smell of burned fat filled the air. But it was not till I got home, and my
mother asked, "What is it?" that at last I wept.

Between her breasts, entangled in her shining hair, I wept as if to purge away my soul in water. She put
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me to bed, and sang to me, and said when I was quiet, "Don't grieve for the King Horse; he has gone to
the Earth Mother, who made us all. She has a thousand thousand children, and knows each one of them.
He was too good for anyone here to ride; but she will find him some great hero, a child of the sun or the
north wind, to be his friend and master; they will gallop all day, and never be tired. Tomorrow you shall
take her a present for him, and I will tell her it comes from you."

Next day we went down together to the Navel Stone. It had fallen from heaven long- ago, before anyone
remembers. The walls of its sunken court were mossy, and the Palace noises fell quiet around. The
sacred House Snake had his hole between the stones; but he only showed himself to my mother, when
she brought him his milk. She laid my honey-cake on the altar, and told the Goddess whom it was for. As
we went, I looked back and saw it lying on the cold stone, and remembered the horse's living breath