"Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years Of Rice And Salt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

As they came down the long eastern slope of the range back onto the steppe, an enormous wall of cloud
reared up in the western half of the sky,
Like Kali's black blanket pulling over them,

The Goddess of Death chasing them out of her land. Solid black underside fluted and rippled,

Black pigs' tails and fishhooks swirling into the air below. A portent so bleak the horses bow their heads,

The men can no longer look at each other.

They approached Temur's great encampment, and the black stormcloud covered the rest of the day,
causing a darkness like night. Hair rose on the back of Bold's neck. A few big raindrops splashed down,
and thunder rolled out of the west like giant iron cartwheels overhead. They hunkered down in their
saddles and kicked the horses on, reluctant to return in such a storm, with such news. Temur would take
it as a portent, just as they did. Temur often said that he owed all his success to an asura that visited him
and gave him guidance. Bold had witnessed one of these visitations, had seen Temur engage in
conversation with an invisible being, and afterwards tell people what they were thinking and what would
happen to them. A cloud this black could only be a sign. Evil in the west. Something bad had happened
back there, some~ thing worse even than plague, maybe, and Temur's plan to conquer the Magyars and
the Franks would have to be abandoned; he had been beaten to it by the goddess of skulls herself. It was
hard to imagine him accepting any such preemption, but there they were, under a storm like none of them
had ever seen, and all the Magyars were dead.

Smoke rose from the vast camp's cooking fires, looking like a great sacrifice, the smell familiar and yet
distant, as if from a home they had already left for ever. Psin looked at the men around him. 'Camp here,'
he ordered. He thought things over. 'Bold.'

Bold felt the fear shoot through him.

'Come on.'

Bold swallowed and nodded. He was not courageous, but he had the

stoic manner of the qa'uchin, Temur's oldest warriors. Psin also would know that Bold was aware they
had entered a different realm, that everything that happened from this point onwards was freakish,
something preordained and being lived through inexorably, a karma they could not escape.

Psin also was no doubt remembering a certain incident from their youths, when the two of them had been
captured by a tribe of taiga hunters north of the Kama River. Together they had staged a very successful
escape, knifing the hunters' headman and running through a bonfire into the night.

The two men rode by the outer sentries and through the camp to the Khan's tent. To the west and north
lightning bolts crazed the black air. Neither men had ever seen such a storm in all their lives. The few little
hairs on Bold's forearms stood up like pig bristles, and he felt the air crackling with hungry ghosts, pretas
crowding in to witness Temur emerge from his tent. He had killed so many.

The two men dismounted and stood there. Guards came out of the tent, drawing aside the flaps of the
doorway and standing at attention, ready with drawn bows. Bold's throat was too dry to swallow, and it
seemed to him a blue light glowed from within the great yurt of the Khan.