"Somtow Sucharitkul - Aquila" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sucharitkul Somtom)

I was somewhat disgruntled; he said, "The White and
Greatest Father said nothing about working under anybody. We
came of our own free will, in friendship, to make war with honor
if we so choose. Do you have any wine?"
"Oh. Sorry." I picked up the flagon to pour some, but he
relieved me of the whole thing and began to guzzle. "And your
men? How many are there?"
"How should I know? Who can count the trees of the forest?"
"Show me then." I lifted the tent flaps; outside, the two
guards lay bound and gagged. The moon was full, and a fire was
roaring at the crossroads of the via principalis and the via
praetoria. I saw them in the half-light, a comical procession such
as you might see in one of Plautus's farces.
Some of the men were mounted; their horses were painted as
bizarrely as they were themselves. Some wore their hair braided
in the Gaulish manner, but unlike the Gauls' it was well-oiled and
sleek. Feathers adorned their heads. They had little armor,
although a few had borrowed cuirasses and one or two sported
ill-fitting helmets. Some were bare-chested; others had
bewildering neckpieces hung with beads, animal claws, seashells,
and silver denarii. All the way down the via principals they came.
It was amazing that they had made no noise. Their women
followed, carrying burdens, or leading dogs with packs tied
behind them.
"Are these," I asked Aquila, "my reinforcements? Can they
take orders?"
"I don't know," Aquila said. "Is there good fighting to be had
here?"
"Well, there are twenty thousand Parthians back there," I
said, jerking my thumb eastward.
"And who might the Parthians be?"
"Parthians," I said (slowly, in the legionaries' pidgin Latin, so
they'd understand every word) "are a race of extremely wicked
people from the east, who revile the name of Rome and seek, in
their overweening hubris, to rob us of our territory and set up a
rival Empire of their own. They have already taken
Domitianopolis and are about to ravage all Cappadocia."
"And what about the Cappadocians? Perhaps they would
prefer the Parthian masters to the Romans?" he said with a nasty
chuckle.
What ignorant idiots! I cursed Domitian for playing this
terrible trick on me. "Obviously," I said with painstaking clarity,
"it is the destiny of Rome to rule the world; the Emperor, who is
a god and bloody well ought to know, is divinely charged with the
right to conquer all inferior nations! Everyone knows that. I
mean, you Lacotians have been Roman citizens for some time
now, haven't you? What a ridiculous thing to be arguing about,
with those beastly Parthians beating at the very gates of the
Empire...."
 "You Romans never listen, do you? By what right, pray, are