"Lars Walker - The Year of the Warrior" - читать интересную книгу автора (Walker Lars)

may fightтАФthat one about the mountains falling into the sea and shaking!тАЭ
I found I still had the crucifix in my hand, gripped so tightly it was wet with my blood. I tried to moisten my lips.
тАЬDeus noster refugium . . .тАЭ I croaked. God is our refuge and strength . . .
I saw the demon cast his spear, and saw his mouth open in something like laughter. I saw him fend ErlingтАЩs spear
in return. I heard the whacking of blades on shield, and saw the dead man lean and whirl; and his leaps were head-
high and his whirls faster than birdsтАЩ wings.
I spoke my psalm again and again, gripping the crucifix as a drowning man clings to driftwood. . . .
Also by this author:

Wolf Time
 ErlingтАЩs Word




Book I of the
Saga of Erling Skjalgsson
 To my Aunt Jean . . .
Frequently mistaken for an angel.
 CHAPTER I
Maeve screamed when they raped her. She screamed all the time they were raping her, and they raped her many
times, for she was young and fair. I tried to run to my sister, straining the chain theyтАЩd bound me to, until some
merciful soul laid the hammer of his axe against the base of my skull.

I was marching when I awoke, chained in a line with all the other Christian souls the Northmen had taken, men
and women, the young and the strong and the hopeful. We hoped again the following day when a troop of bold
young lads from Collooney came pounding over a hill and down upon us, swinging their axes and shouting their
slogan, and they looked like the angels of God to me, beautiful as the love of children. But the Northerners met them
with a tough shield wall and cast their spears and offered them axe and sword and thrusting spear, and those fair lads
died, except for a few who were taken and bound with us. After that we saw no more resistance. The king was
warring with the OтАЩNeill that year, and much taken up with other things.
My head ached as if Satan had poked a toe in my eye, but I cared nothing for that. I had set my heart to praying.
The abbot would have wondered at the fervor of my prayers. I pleadedтАФI begged GodтАФI promised Him that I
would be a monk and a priest if only He would deliver me and my sister. I prayed without ceasing; I made vows to
all the saints I could think of. I watched the heavens and the earth for an answer, refusing to doubt.
The Northerners had their camp in a river mouth in Sligo Bay, and they loaded us into one of their shipsтАФa fat
knarr with an open hold amidships, where we huddled with the beasts theyтАЩd stolen, and ate much the same fodder. I
gazed back to shore, squinting for my miracle, refusing to know that I was leaving Ireland. I had no words for what
was happening, but surely we werenтАЩt being taken across the sea. God was too good to let that happen.
But when we rounded Inishmurray and Sligo Bay fell from sight and only the waves to port and strange shores to
starboard, I knew that my miracle would not come. And so I knew there was no God, and the only thing left was to
die.
We were chained starboard of the mast, balanced by the livestock to port. The Northerners had strung a rope
down the center and warned us not to approach it. When one of them was making his way from the stern to the
foredeck, I gathered up my length of chain and threw myself at him. I caught him unguarded and we struggled a
moment before the other Northmen pulled us apart and kicked me bloody. Then one of them, a squat bruiser whoтАЩd
lost part of his nose and spoke barbarous Irish, put his face down near mine and said, тАЬWeтАЩre going to Visby on
Gotland to sell you. If you make us mad we wonтАЩt kill you, lad, noтАФweтАЩll sell you to the Arabs, whoтАЩll take you far
off to Eastland and geld you so youтАЩll be quiet and good.тАЭ
So I limped back and sat in bilgewater, and Maeve stretched to the end of her chain so that she could just touch