"S. M. Stirling - Sea of Time 03 - On the Oceans of Eternity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

children and dyingтАФhadтАж vanishedтАж when the Event happened.

The little party rode their horses down narrow rutted trails
made by deer and wild boar and aurochs as much as men and
men's herds, beneath towering oaks and beeches, ash and
chestnut and lime, tangled thorny underbrush to either side.
Wind whipped through leaves turning sere and yellow with early
autumn, scattering them downward with a steady drip and
drizzle following behind. The air above was thick with wings,
many on their way southward for the year, and their cries drifted
down with the rain: redpolls and siskins chattered anger at the
humans from the boughs. The trail veered down from a
ridgeback, through a marsh-bordered stream edged with alders;
water lapped her stirrup-irons and mud spattered on her boots
and trouser legs with a cold yeasty smell. The storm mounted,
moaning through the branches and ruffling the surface of the
puddles. It was good to speak into the teeth of the whetted wind:

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman

At yonder heaving hill would stare:

The blood that warms an English yeoman,
 The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

"Roman?" Swindapa asked.

In the decade they'd been together the young woman of the
Fiernan Bohulugi had acquired a fair modern education to add
to the lore of an astronomer-priestess of Moon Woman and
hunter of the Spear Mark, but not much of it concerned the
details of a history that would never happen.

"A people that invadedтАж would have invaded Alba a long time
from now. AboutтАж" Let's see, this is year 10 A.E., which makes
it 1240 B.C., Claudius invaded Britain in the 40s A.D., soтАж "Call
it thirteen hundred years from now. They would have built a city
thereabouts." She nodded off to the northwest, to where
Wroxeter stood in her birth-century.

"Like the Sun People," Swindapa said with a slight shiver.

Alston leaned over and squeezed her shoulder for an instant.
The Event had dumped her commandтАФthe Coast Guard training
windjammer EagleтАФinto the early spring of 1250 B.C., along
with the island of Nantucket. The first thing they'd done besides
catching a few whales was make a voyage to Britain, to barter
steel tools and trinkets for desperately needed food and seed corn
and livestock; they'd ended up making their first landing among
the Ira├╝na tribe, the latest of many teuatha of the Sun People to