"David Zindell - Requiem of Homo Sapiens 01 - The Broken God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)

bodies on the sleds and hauling them up to the burial grounds
above the cave was gruesome, exhausting work. Some of his
near-sisters had died many days earlier, and their flesh had
run dark and soft as rotten bloodfruit. It would have been less
horrible to remove the bodies all at once and place them in the
snowdrifts where they would freeze hard and fast. But there
were bears in the forest and packs of wolves; as it was, they
had to gather bunches of dead wood to keep the cave's entrance
fires burning, to keep the wild animals at bay. Of course the
sled dogs were familiar with fire, and they had little fear of
it. And so Danlo and Soli decided to spend a couple of days
hunting shagshay while most of their people awaited burial.
They had to flay the great, white, fleecy animals and cut them
up for food, or else the starving dogs might have gnawed off
their leashes and gone sniffing for carrion in the cave. After
that, they returned to work. One by one, they placed the bodies
on the icy, treeless burial field. They oriented them with
their heads to the north.
They heaped boulders atop each body; they built many stone
pyramids to keep the animals away and to remind them that each
living thing must return to the earth from which it is born.
Their labour took ten days. There were too few boulders close
to the cave, so they had to tie the dogs to their traces and
drive sleds down through the forest to an icy stream where they
found many smooth, rounded
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rocks. And then back up to the burial ground again with sleds
full of rocks, back and forth for many trips. When they were
finished at last, they found some anda bushes and picked orange
and red fireflowers to place atop the graves. And then they
prayed for the dead, prayed until their voices fell hoarse and
their tears were frozen sheets over their cheeks; they prayed
far into the night until the cold off the sea ice chilled their
bones.
'Mi alasharia,' Danlo said one last time, and he turned to
Soli. 'It is done, yes?'
They began walking down through the dark graves, down
through the snowdrifts and the swaying yu trees. There were
stars in the sky, and everywhere snow covered the forest. After
a while they came to the stream where they had built a little
snowhut to live in while they did their work. Never again would
they sleep in the cave. 'What will we do now?' Danlo asked.
'Tomorrow, we will hunt again,' Soli said. 'We will hunt and
eat and continue to pray.'
Danlo was quiet while he stared at the cold snowhut that
would provide shelter for a night, or perhaps many nights. And
then he said, 'But, sir, what will we do?'
They crawled through the tunnel of the hut. The tunnel was
dark and icy, and barely wide enough to allow Soli passage. The
main chamber was larger, though not so large that either of