"Guy N. Smith - Sabat 4 - The Druid Connection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

. . . Oh, Jesus, those awful features, eyes that saw and understood . . . and
gloated!

The curate wilted beneath its baleful stare, the cavity of a mouth seeming to
grin down at him. 'Hurry, for the Wicker Man is hungry and the gods must be
appeased before they wreak their vengeance upon those who serve them.'

The Oke Priests dragged him with a new haste, pulling him so close to the
effigy that he could no longer meet those terrible eyes. He almost fell but
was pulled upright. He tried to scream, an incoherent sound that brought jeers
from his captors like nightmarish echoes of his own voice. He wanted to faint,
prayed for unconsciousness that would merge painlessly into death so that when
he awoke he would find himself in the heaven about which he had preached so
emphatically to his congregations. Instead he remained in this living hell
which only needed the fires to be lit.

The straw man had no rear, a kind of half silhouette so that the interior
could be reached by means of a short, crude ladder made from stout branches
tied together. An empty shell, an Adam waiting to be given life. Somehow
Owen's feet found the rungs, the druids' hands moving him like a robot,
supporting him so that he did not fall. Now he was inside the thing, his
paralysed arms being thrust into the Wicker Man's sleeves, a tight fit that
held him upright even though his legs sagged and refused to bear his weight.

Oh God, the stench; it was the foul, nauseating odour of uncleaned stables,
the acrid smell of excreta and urine. He tried to hold his breath but could
not, retched and vomited so that the spew ran down his cassock. Choking,
gasping for breath and drawing in putrefaction; the stink of sheer evil!
He had resigned himself to death, praying not for deliverance but that he
might be spared pain. 'Oh Lord, I am weak and frail ... let me pass over into
Thy . . . '

For the first time he realised that he could see out of this

claustrophobic, suffocating prison, that his head fitted snugly into that of
the straw man as though these ancient Oke Priests had decided upon their
victim beforehand and made it to measure. Through the nostrils he could
breathe the cold damp air of a bygone morning; through the eyeslits he could
see the gathering of cloaked figures standing a few yards away, that tall Arch
Druid gazing up at him, the death-like features twisted into a mask of sheer
hatred.

'Blasphemer, traitor,' the other's words hung in the still atmosphere. 'May
your death appease the wrath of the old ones. And may those who join you in
this sacrilege and treachery be warned by your own fate.'

One of the priests stepped forward and handed a burning crackling branch to
their leader. A hiss of eagerness came from the watchers. 'Burn the false one,
O Aida!'