"Steve White - The Disinherited 03 - Debt of Ages" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Steve)

him, burned with a force that could snatch back that which had been
consigned to the irrecoverable past and defy the Fates themselves (as
always, Sidonius automatically chided himself for his lifelong weakness for
pagan mythology). Yes, he had known that the British ruler with whom he
had corresponded was destined to restore the Empire. He had known it
with a simple, absolute certainty that, he guiltily acknowledged, not even
the Church's doctrines could inspire in him.

That moment had remained with Sidonius through all the tumultuous,
unbelievable years that had followed. His certainty had faltered that very
winter when he had learned of the treason of the Praetorian Prefect of
Gaul, whom he had once called friend. (What had his name been? Oh, yes:
Arvandus.) But the Restorers destiny was not to be deflected by betrayal,
and the matter had been forgotten in the jubilation following the great
victory at Bourges. That victory had banished the terrifying Visigothic
threat to the realm of old nightmares from which one had awakened. And
then had come a potentially disastrous digression, with rebellion calling
the High King back to Britain. But he had returned to the continent
somehow strengthened by his campaigning in the islands wild western
hills. After that, events had moved with the seeming inevitability of a
rivers journey to the sea.

The Restorer had never ceased to insist that he had not sought even the
Emperorship of the West, much less of a reunited Roman Empire.
Sidonius was inclined to believe him. Looking back, it was hard to see how
he could have avoided any one of the steps he had taken, or how each of
those steps could have failed to lead to the step that had followed. After his
ally the Western Emperor Anthemius had been murdered, OdoacerтАФwho
had succeeded Ricimer as Master of Soldiers at RomeтАФhad moved against
him. With no alternative save extinction, the Restorer had advanced into
Italy, where on the victorious field of Pavia his British and Gallic and
Frankish troops had proclaimed him Augustus of the West. That had been
in 474, the year the Eastern Emperor Leo had died; his successor Zeno
had never acknowledged that he had a legitimate fellow in the West, and
after six years of uneasy coexistence had come the inevitable clash.
Thinking back, Sidonius wondered how he could ever have doubted its
outcome. Me and most of the world, he reflected, which always made him
feel a little better. But if his confidence had wavered, his loyalty never had.
And when old Pope Simplicius had died in 483, the ruler of the
miraculously reunified Empire had let it be known that in his opinion the
churchmen and citizenry of Rome could make no better choice for their
new bishop than his old friend and supporter, that noted prelate and man
of letters Bishop Sidonius of Clermont. For some odd reason they had
agreed.

No, he could never forget those years. Nothing could dim their luster in
his memoryтАФnot even the uncomprehending hurt and disappointment he
had felt all too often during the years that had followed. And he heard
himself form the same words he had spoken on that windy beach
twenty-two years before, when it had all begun. "Very wellтАж Artorius."