"Anderson, Poul - Sky People, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

“Only if you remain here,” said Tresa. Her eyes were chips of green ice. “Would to Marl you had not pledged yourself to sail!”
“If they come after us at sea—”
“I do not think they will. You carry a hundred women and a few trade goods. The Sky People will have their pick of ten thousand women, as many men, and all our city’s treasures. ‘Wliy should they take the trouble to pursue you?”
“Aye . . . aye. . . .“
“Go,” she said coldly. “You dare not linger.”
He faced her. It had been like a blow. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Do you think the Maurai are cowards?”
She hesitated. Then, with a stubborn, reluctant honesty: “No.”
“So why do you scoff me?”
“Oh, go away!” She knelt by the rail, bowed head in arms and surrendered to herself.
Ruori left her and gave his orders. Men scrambled into the rigging. Furled canvas broke loose and cracked in a young wind. Beyond the jetty, the ocean glittered blue, with small whitecaps;
gulls skimmed across heaven. Ruori saw only the glimpses he had had before, as he led the retre~it from the palace.
A weaponless man, lying with his head split open. A girl, hardly twelve years old, who screamed as two raiders carried her into an alley. An aged man fleeing in terror, zigzagging, while four archers took potshots at him and howled laughter when he fell transfixed and dragged himself along on his hands. A woman sitting dumb in the street, her dress torn, next to a baby whose brains had been dashed out. A little statue in a niche, a holy image, with a faded bunch of violets at its feet, beheaded by a casual war-hammer. A house that burned, and shrieks from within.
Suddenly the aircraft overhead were not beautiful.
To reach up and pull them out of the sky!
Ruori stopped dead. The crew surged around him. He heard a short-haul chantey, deep young voices with the merriment of always having been free and well fed, but it echoed in a far corner of his brain.
“Casting off!” sang the mate.
“Not yet! Not yet! Wait!” -
Ruori ran toward the poop, up the ladder and past the steersman to Doflita Tresa. She had risen again, to stand with bent head past which the hair swept to hide her face.
“Tresa,” panted Ruori. “Tresa, I’ve an idea. I think—there may be a chance—perhaps we can fight back after all!”
She looked up. Her fingers closed on his arm till he felt the nails draw blood.
Words tumbled from him: “It will depend. . . on luring them to us. At least a couple of their vessels. . . must follow us.
to sea. I think then—I’m not sure of the details, but it may be. we can fight . . . even drive them off—”
Still she stared at him. He felt a hesitation. “Of course,” he said, “we may lose the fight. And we do have the women aboard.”
“If you lose,” she asked, so low he could scarcely hear it, “will we die or be captured?”
“I think we will die.”
“That is well.” She nodded, shivering. “Yes. Fight, then.”
“There is one thing I am unsure of. How to make them pursue us.” He paused. “If someone were to let himself. . . be captured by them—and told them we were carrying off a great treasure— would they believe that?”
“They might well do so.” Life had come back to her voice, even eagerness. “Let us say, the calde’s hoard. None ever existed, but the robbers would believe my father’s cellars were stuffed with gold.”
“Then someone must go to them,” said Ruori. He turned his back to her, twisted his fingers together and slogged toward a conclusion he did not want to reach. “But it could not be just anyone. They would club a man in among the other slaves, would they not? I mean, would they listen to him at all?”
“Probably not. Very few of them know Spaflol. By the time a man who babbled of treasure was understood, they might all be halfway home.” Tresa scowled. “What shall we do?”
Ruori saw the answer, but he could not get it past his throat.
“I am sorry,” he mumbled. “My idea was not so good after all. Let us be gone.”
The girl forced her way between him and the rail to stand in front of him, touching as if they danced again. Her voice was altogether steady. “You know a way.”
“I do not!”
“I have come to know you well, in one night. You are a poor liar. Tell me.”
He looked away. Somehow, he got out: “A woman—not any woman, but a very beautiful one—would she not soon be taken to their chief?”
Tresa stood aside. The color drained from her face.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I think so.”
“But then again,” said Ruori wretchedly, “she might be killed. They do so much wanton killing, those men. I cannot let anyone who was given into my protection risk death.”
“You heathen fool,” she said through tight lips, “do you think the chance of being killed matters to me?”
“What else could happen?” he asked, surprised. And then: “Oh, yes, of course, the woman would be a slave if we lost the battle
afterward. Though I should imagine, if she is beautiful, she would not be badly treated.”
“And is that all you—” Tresa stopped. He had never known it was possible for a smile to show pure hurt. “Of course. I should have realized. Your people have other ways of thinking.”
“What do you mean?” he fumbled.
A moment more she stood with clenched fists. Then, half to herself: “They killed my father, yes, I saw him dead in the doorway. They would leave my city a ruin peopled by corpses.”
Her head lifted. “I shall go,” she said.
“You?” He grabbed her shoulders. “No, surely not you! One of the others—”
“Should I send anyone else? I am the calde’s daughter.”
She pulled herself free of him and hurried across the deck, down the ladder toward the gangway. Her face was turned from the ship. A few words drifted back: “Afterward, if there is an afterward, there is always the convent.”
He did not understand. He stood on the poop, staring after her and abominating himself until she was lost to sight. Then he said, “Cast off,” and the ship stood out to sea.