"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Margaret Of Urbs 01 - The Black Flame" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

THE MASTER MARCHES

lands, and across to the blue mountains of Ozarky in the south. There is where he should have been,
there with the mountainy men, but by the time the tired rider had brought the news to Selui, and by the
time Hull had reached Ormiston, it was already too late, and Ozarky was but an outlying province of the
expanding Empire, while the Master camped there above Norse, and sent representations to Selui.

Selui wasn't going to yield. Already the towns of the three months old Selui Confederation were
sending in their men, from Bloom'ton, from Cairo, even from distant Ch'cago on the shores of the saltless
sea Mitchin. The men of the Confederation hated the little, slender, dark Ch'cagoans, for they had not yet
forgotten the disastrous battle at Starved Rock, but any allies were welcome against Joaquin Smith. The
Ch'cagoans were good enough fighters, too, and heart and soul in the cause, for if the Master took Selui,
his Empire would reach dan-gerously close to the saltless seas, spreading from the ocean on the east to
the mountains on the west, and north as far as the great confluence of the M'sippi and M'souri.

Hull knew there was fighting ahead, and he relished it. It was too bad that he couldn't have fought in
Ozarky for his own people, but Ormiston would do. That was his home for the present, since he'd found
work here with File Ormson, the squat iron-worker, broad-shoul-dered as Hull himself and a head
shorter. Pleasant work for his mighty muscles, though at the moment there was nothing to do.

He stared at the peaceful countryside. Joaquin Smith was marching, and beyond the village, the
farmers were still working in their fields. Hull listened to the slow Sowing Song:

"This is what the ground needs: First the plow and then the seeds, Then the harrow
and then the hoe, And rain to make the harvest grow.
 "This is what the man needs: First the promises, then the deeds, 25

Then the arrow and then the blade, And last the digger with his black spade.

"This is what his wife needs: First a garden free of weeds, Then the daughter, and then the
son, And a fireplace warm when the work is done.

"This is what his son needs:тАФ"

Hull ceased to listen. They were singing, but Joa-quin Smith was marching, marching with the men of
a hundred cities, with his black banner and its golden ser-pent fluttering. That serpent, Old Einar had
said, was the Midgard Serpent, which ancient legend related had encircled the earth. It was the symbol
of the Master's dream, and for a moment Hull had a stirring of sympathy for that dream.

"No!" he growled to himself. "Freedom's better, and it's for us to blow the head from the Midgard
Serpent." A voice sounded at his side. "Hull! Big Hull Tarvishl Are you too proud to notice humble folk?"

It was Vail Ormiston, her violet eyes whimsical be-low her smooth copper hair. He flushed; he was
not used to the ways of these valley girls, who flirted frankly and openly in a manner impossible to the
shy girls of the mountains. Yet heтАФwell, in a way, he liked it, and he liked Vail Ormiston, and he
remembered pleasantly an evening two days ago when he had sat and talked a full three hours with her
on the bench by the tree that shaded Ormiston well. And he remembered the walk through the fields
when she had shown him the mouth of the great ancient storm sewer that had run under the dead city,
and that still stretched crumbling for miles under-ground toward the hills, and he recalled her story of