"Howard Waldrop & Leigh Kennedy - One Horse Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

This watch is almost over. Look, there's old rosy-fingers in the east.
You know how sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night thinking, about how you never wrote that
thank-you letter to grandad before he died? Or about the pain in your tummy being fatal? Or about the money
you owe? Well, I've had a night like that without being in bed. Leo and I kept ourselves awake some of the
time by gambling in a sticks and stones game, the sort you can scramble underfoot if one of the sleepless
mucky-mucks happens to show. Most of the time we just stared out at nothing, worried that those footsteps
might come back.
It wasn't helped by Andromache's spell of sobbing and shouting a few hours ago. Hector wouldn't have
liked that, even though it's strangely heartwarming to hear a wife miss her husband. But Hector knew that
women's wailing unsettled the soldiers.
Like me. Unsettled is about one-tenth of it.
Thinking about how we've lost most of our best generals, most of all Hector. Thinking about how it's no
longer special being a prince when every other soldier is as well. Thinking about my family. Thinking about
spooky Cassandra. Thinking about how rotten this war is.
When the sun comes up we'll see what they were up to on the beach last night.
Leo and I still don't want to believe that after ten years, they had simply swum away. But then, Achilles
was their man, like Hector was our man. With both those guys gone, maybe they've decided it's time to pack
it in.
Now, in the earliest light, I lean over the wall and see a huge dark shape sitting outside the main city gate.
Bigger than the gate itself.
"What the hell is that?"
"Coro, the ships are going!" shouts Leocritus. Like me, he has come alert in the morning light. He points
out to sea, which is as thick with ships as wasps on a smear of jam.
"But, Leo, what the hell is that?" I say again, putting my hands on the sides of his head and making him
look down, to the right.
At the horse.
"Zeus H. Thunderfart!" he breathes.
The soldiers on watch from the other walls are shouting down to the people. "They're gone! The Greeks
have gone!"
People come out to see what's happening. Doors open and people hang out their top windows, pointing to
the ships now on the horizon.
Celebration! I hug Leo and he hugs me; we jump up and down, making obscene gestures at the cowardly
Greeks ships sailing south. I've never heard such a din in Troy. The women are waving scarves, bringing out
the tiny children on their hips, banging on pots. The men bang on everything, shouting about the
shortcomings of Agamemnon's men and the strength and bravery of Trojan warriors. All so early in the
morning, even before the wine has been brought out.
Everyone's clambering and excited, falling all over each other crowding at our end of town. Now word is
getting around about the giant horse at the gate.
I'm still on the wall, looking at it.
It's about four men tall and long, probably fashioned of elm with a big box belly and a straight neck jutting
out at an angle, alert pointy ears. Its carved eyes look wild and windblown, as if in battle. Is this a peace
offering?
I can hear voices asking whether we should open the gate or not. A couple of our soldiers look up at us on
the wall. "What should we do?"
"I don't know," I shout down. "Get a priest. Or someone from the royal family."
After a few minutes, the great King Priam, a frail and tiny man billowing with the finest woven white robes,
arrives with Aeneas trotting behind. They open the gate, go out, and a crowd surrounds the horse.
I also see a commotion, a v-shaped wedge of frightened and alarmed people, running down from the high
city. The cutting point of the wedge is the massive priest of Poseidon, almost as naked as if he had come