"Tad Williams - Otherland 1 - City of Golden Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

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his finger and thumb.
"Thanks, mate." The stranger rolled over and began crawling away up the trench, then shouted
something odd over his shoulder. "Keep your head down. Try to think about getting out. About
really getting _out_."
Paul lifted his hand in a farewell wave, although the man could not see him. The wounded
soldier topside was shouting again, wordless grunting cries that sounded like something inhuman
giving birth.
Within moments, as though wakened by demonic invocation, the guns started up again.

Paul clenched his teeth and tried to stop up his ears with his hands, but he could _still_
hear the man screaming; the rasping voice was like a hot wire going in one earhole and out the
other, sawing back and forth. He had snatched perhaps three hours of sleep in the last two days,
and the night fast approaching seemed sure to be even worse. Why hadn't any of the stretcher teams
gone out to bring back the wounded man? The guns had been silent for at least an hour.
But as he thought about it, Paul realized that except for the man who had come begging a
light, he had not seen anyone else since they had all fled the forward trenches that morning. He
had assumed that there were others just a few bends down, and the man with the cigarette had
seemed to confirm that, but the bombardment had been so steady that Paul had felt no desire to
move. Now that things had been quiet a while, he was beginning to wonder what was happening to the
rest of the platoon. Had Finch and the rest all fallen back to an earlier series of scrapes? Or
were they just a few yards down the line, hugging the depths, unwilling to face the open killing
ground even on a mission of mercy?
He slid forward onto his knees and tipped his helmet back so it would not slide over his eyes,
then began to crawl westward. Even well below the top of the trench, he felt his own movement to
be a provocative act. He hunched his shoulders in expectation of some terrible blow from above,
yet nothing came down on him but the ceaseless wail of the dying man.
Twenty yards and two bends later, he reached a wall of mud.
Paul tried to wipe away the tears, but only succeeded in pushing dirt into his eyes. A last
explosion echoed above and the ground shook in sympathy. A gob of mud on one of the roots
protruding into the trench quivered, fell, and became an indistinguishable part of the greater
muddiness below.
He was trapped. That was the simple, horrible fact. Unless he braved the unprotected ground
above, he could only huddle in his sealed-off section of trench until a shell found him. He had no
illusions that he would last long enough for starvation to become a factor. He had no illusions at
all. He was as good as dead. He would never again listen to Mullet complaining about rations, or
watch old Finch trimming his mustache with a pocketknife. Such small things, so homely, but he
already missed them so badly that it hurt
The dying man was still out there, still howling.
_This is hell, nor am I out of it. . . . _
What was that from? A poem? The Bible?
He unsnapped his holster and drew his Webley, then lifted it toward his eye. In the failing
light the hole in its barrel seemed deep as a well, an emptiness into which he could fall and
never come out--a silent, dark, restful emptiness. . . .
Paul smiled a bleak little smile, then carefully laid the pistol in his lap. It would be
unpatriotic, surely. Better to force the Germans to use up their expensive shells on him. Squeeze
a few more working hours out of some mottle-armed _fraulein_ on a factory line in the Ruhr Valley.