"Gene Wolfe - New Sun 1- The Shadow of the Torturer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

lantern over his head. "We're waiting to get in, good-man," Drotte called. He
was the taller, but he made his dark face humble and respectful.
"Not until dawn," the leader said gruffly. "You young fellows had better get
home."
"Goodman, the guard was supposed to let us in, but he's not here,"
"You won't be getting in tonight." The leader put his hand on the hilt of his
knife before taking a step closer. For a moment I was afraid he knew who we
were.
Drotte moved away, and the rest of us stayed behind him. "Who are you, goodman?
You're not soldiers."
"We're the volunteers," one of the others said. "We come to protect our own
dead."
"Then you can let us in."
The leader had turned away. "We let no one inside but ourselves." His key
squealed in the lock, and the gate creaked back.
Before anyone could stop him Eata darted through. Someone cursed, and the leader
and two others sprinted after Eata, but he was too fleet for them. We saw his
tow-colored hair and patched shirt zigzag among the sunken graves of paupers,
then disappear in the thicket of statuary higher up. Drotte tried to pursue him,
but two men grabbed his arms.
"We have to find him. We won't rob you of your dead."
"Why do you want to go in, then?" one volunteer asked.
"To gather herbs," Drotte told him. "We are physicians' gallipots. Don't you
want the sick healed?"
The volunteer stared at him. The man with the key had dropped his lantern when
he ran after Eata, and there were only two left. In their dim light the
volunteer looked stupid and innccent; I suppose he was a laborer of some kind.
Drotte continued, "You must know that for certain simples to attain their
highest virtues they must be pulled from grave soil by moonlight. It will frost
soon and kill everything, but our masters require supplies for the winter. The
three of them arranged for us to enter tonight, and I borrowed that lad from his
father to help me."
"You don't have anything to put simples in."
I still admire Drotte for what he did next. He said, "We are to bind them in
sheaves to dry," and without the least hesitation drew a length of common string
from his pocket.
"I see," the volunteer said. It was plain he did not. Roche and I edged nearer
the gate.
Drotte actually stepped back from it. "If you won't let us gather the herbs,
we'd better go. I don't think we could ever find that boy in there now."
"No you don't. We have to get him out."
"All right," Drotte said reluctantly, and we stepped through, the volunteers
following. Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the
human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which
we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for
them. I understood the principle intuitively that night as I heard the last
volunteer swing the gate closed behind us.
A man who had not spoken before said, "I'm going to watch over my mother. We've
wasted too much time already. They could have her a league off by now."
Several of the others muttered agreement, and the group began to scatter, one