"James Rollins - Black Order" - читать интересную книгу автора (Romeyn Henry)

Only dumb luck brought her up against one of the stone pilings and offered a place to shelter.
But now with the boats leaving, she could wait no longer. Blood pumped from her. She sensed it was
only the cold keeping her alive. But the same cold was chilling the life from the frail child.
She kicked for shore, a frantic thrashing, uncoordinated by weakness and numbness. She sank under the
water, dragging the infant down with her.
No.
She struggled up, but the water was suddenly heavier, harder to fight.
She refused to succumb.
Then under her toes, slick rocks bumped against her boots. She cried out, forgetting she was still
underwater, and gagged on the mouthful of river. She sank a bit more, then kicked one last time off the
muddy rocks. Her head breeched, and her body flung itself toward shore.
The bank rose steeply underfoot.
On hand and knee, she scrabbled out of the water, clutching the baby to her throat. She reached the
shoreline and fell facedown onto the rocky bank. Shehad no strength to move another limb. Her own
blood bathed over the child. It took her last effort to focus on the baby.
He was not moving. Not breathing.
She closed her eyes and prayed as an eternal blackness swallowed her.
Cry, damn you, cry...
Father Varick was the first to hear the mewling.
He and his brothers were sheltered in the wine cellar beneath Saints Peter and Paul Church. They had
fled when the bombing of Breslau began last night. On their knees, they had prayed for their island to be
spared. The church, built in the fifteenth century, had survived the ever-changing masters of the border
city. They sought heavenly protection to survive once more.
It was in such silent piety that the plaintive cries echoed to the monks.
Father Varick stood, which took much effort for his old legs.
"Where are you going?" Franz asked.
"I hear my flock calling for me," the father said. For the past two decades, he had fed scraps to the river
cats and the occasional cur that frequented the riverside church.
"Now is not the time," another brother warned, fear ripe in his voice.
Father Varick had lived too long to fear death with such youthful fervor. He crossed the cellar and bent
to enter the short passage that ended at the river door. Coal used to be carted up the same passage and
stored where now fine green bottles nestled in dust and oak.
He reached the old coal door, lifted the bar, and undid the latch.
Using a shoulder, he creaked it open.
The sting of smoke struck him first—then the mewling drew his eyes down. "Mein Gott im Himmel..."A
woman had collapsed steps from the door in the buttress wall that supported the channel church. She
was not moving. He hurried to her side, dropping again to his knees, a new prayer on his lips.
He reached to her neck and checked for a sign of life, but found only blood and ruin. She was soaked
head to foot and as cold as the stones.
Dead.
Then the cry again...coming from her far side.
He shifted to find a babe, half-buried under the woman, also bloody.
Though blue from the cold and just as wet, the child still lived. He freed the infant from the body. His wet
swaddling shed from him with their waterlogged weight.
A boy.
He quickly ran his hands over the tiny body and saw the blood was not the child's.Only his mother's.
He glanced sadly down at the woman. So much death. He searched the far side of the river. The city
burned, roiling smoke into the dawning sky. Gunfire continued. Had she swum across the channel? All to
save her child?
"Rest," he whispered to the woman. "You have earned it."