"part5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keith Brooke - Lord of Stone)

Now cokers is mucky but they's beauties still, they'll keep
you moving."

Bligh shook his head. "I don't know what the reason is," he
said. "But I'm staying on for a day or two."

"You ignore the timetables, and you're crossing with the luck
of the Lord," said Black Paul. "One thing I've learnt is that
if you ignores them then trouble's waiting around the
corner."

"Sorry," said Bligh. "But they're your timetables, not mine."

"Ah," said Black Paul, "but they's not my troubles."

Bligh was determined, even as he stood in the cutting and
watched Black Paul leap onto the rear of a coke wagon and
wave his farewell. He realised that he would miss the
vagrant. He had learnt a lot from Black Paul: when they had
first met, Bligh had still been suffering from the
after-shock of the war, but now he felt in command again. He
had a lot to thank Black Paul for, if only he had known how
to express it.

He spent another night in the church.

After a time one of the under-priests came around, as he had
done on the previous evening. He stopped by Bligh and told
him that the Church could only extend its blessing for two
successive nights. Tomorrow Bligh would have to go out to the
shanty settlement on the edge of town and find somewhere for
himself, if he was to stay in Abeyat for any longer. Bligh
thanked him and turned away in dismissal. He knew he was
being rude, but he could not bare to go through the ritual
blessing in the Six Elements that he had endured the previous
night, while Black Paul, more forthright, had cursed the
priest and then ignored him.

The next morning the same under-priest picked him for one of
the labour gangs and Bligh spent his second day clearing the
fallen from the battlefield. In the evening he wandered
through the town, feeling physically and emotionally drained.
He paused for a while where the patched-up buildings gave way
to a heavily shelled area of rubble which had thrown up a
sudden profusion of shelters constructed crudely of wood and
stone, and covered with tarpaulins and sheets of rusting,
corrugated metal.

Among the ruins, women cooked communally in clearings, their
large black pots propped up on glowing stones in the embers