"David Zindell - Requiem of Homo Sapiens 01 - The Broken God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)

travel. Who could say when a fierce sarsara, the Serpent's
Breath, would blow in from the north, heralding many days of
blizzard? If the storms delayed his crossing too long, he might
be stranded far out on the Starnbergersee when false winter's
hot sun came out and melted the sea ice. And then he and his
dogs would die. No, he thought, he must find the City long
before then.
And so, when he deemed himself healed, he went out to hunt
shagshay. Skiing through the valleys below Kweitkel was now
very painful, since every push and glide caused his membrum to
chafe against the inside of his trousers. Pissing could be an
agony. The air stung the exposed red tip of his membrum
whenever he paused to empty himself. Even so he hunted
diligently and often because he needed a lot of meat. (Ice
fishing through a hole in the stream's ice would have been an
easier source
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of food, but he found that the fatfish were not running that
year.) He cut the meat and scant blubber into rations; he
sealed the rich blood into waterproof skins; he entered the
cave and raided the winter barrels of baldo nuts. Into his sled
went carefully measured packets of food. Into his sled, he
carefully stowed his oilstone, sleeping furs, bag of flints,
and bear spear. And, of course, his long, barbed whalebone
harpoon. The dogs could pull only so much weight. Somewhere to
the east they would finish the last of the food, and he would
use the harpoon to hunt seals. On the morning of his departure
he faced the first of many hard decisions: what to do with the
dogs? He would need only seven dogs to pull the sled: Bodi,
Luyu, Kono, Siegfried, Noe, Atal, and his best friend, Jiro.
The others, the dogs of Wicent and Jaywe, and the other
families of the tribe, he would have to let loose. Or kill.
After he had loaded his sled, he paused to look at the dogs
staked out near their snow dens at the front of the cave. There
were fifty-nine of them, and they were watching him with their
pale blue eyes, wagging their tales and whining. In truth, he
knew it was his duty to kill them, for how would they live
without men to get their food and comfort them when they were
sick or lonely? The dogs would flee barking into the forest,
and they would pack and try to hunt. The wolves, however, were
better hunters than the dogs; the silent wolves would track and
circle them, and they would kill the dogs one by one. Or they
would die of hunger, with folds of flesh hanging loosely over
their bones. The dogs would surely die, but who was he to kill
them? He thought it would be better for them to know a single
additional day of life, even if that day were filled with pain
and terror. He looked over the treetops into the sky. It was
sharda, a deep, deep blue. The deep sky, the green and white
hills, the smells of life – even a dog could love the world and
experience something like joy. Joy is the right of terror, he