Совершенно неожиданно выяснилось, что книга во французском переводе выходит на неделю раньше оригинала, т.е. сегодня. На сайте BL появился бесплатный отрывок-вступление.
Ну и я слишком долго и сильно ждал эту книгу, чтобы его не прочитать!
Перевёл с французского на английский, поправил совсем вырвиглазные ошибки, хотя качество перевода не самое лучшее, читайте на свой страх и риск.
Но отрывок мощнейший абсолютно. Там как раз про женщин, да
"Много текста"Wind blew on her skin.
This breeze belonged to her memory, but seemed no less real. The existence inside the tank confused the past and the present. Increased by the immense cogitators of the titan, the sensations of what was and what had been coexisting within the same moment. Her life had become like a long book to look at; So it did not seem strange to me to perceive the animal fragrance of the mega-herds, even if for more than a century, all she had felt, all the smells, all the contacts, all the tastes were summed up in the liquid lukewarm amniotic. In one and the same moment, Mohana Mankata Vi was locked in the skull of Luxor Invictoria, and she was riding her horse, Hamaj, and she was a sleeping child. She told a class of her daughters about Tigris the story of the day the Legio was born. She was young. She was old.
Memories filtered through her dreams when Mohana Mankata Vi was sleeping. At the moment that the lower spirits were pointing to the present, her naked body shifted weakly into the liquid that was giving him life, her arms grazing the network of feeding tubes, data lanyards and synaptic connecting cables that formed a cocoon around her.
She did not feel them. She did not see the confined limits of her aquatic world. Her body was imprisoned, but her mind roamed freely.
This wind carried off the fertile dust of the steppes, redepositing it on the forest lands of the house Vi. Just as his breath nourished the trees, he instilled his vigor into the soul of Mohana Mankata Vi.
The sun was piercing through the misty air, and other sensations returned to her to which she had not been treated for a long time. The trees rustled, then shook, as the wind blew softly or loudly. Her mouth kept the taste of the milk of the mares. It was springtime, hot and cold all at once; the sun's rays hit her face even as an icy cold air burned her lungs. She gasped a little; her features stung her, her body exalted by the ride to the top of the promontory. Her fingers were numb around the reins, though she would never have let them go. The hold she had on them was too busy.
All these details were strikingly clear: perfect beyond the faculty of a human to store them at the moment, recovered from the motive of its organic engrams, and reconstructed with mechanical precision at not that their reminiscence became more real than life.
Hamaj pawed and banged impatiently at the flat top, the rock sparking with sparks under his iron shoes. The movement of his muscles undulated under the black coat of his dress; the length of his soft, rough mane beat the air around Mohana's arms. He already sensed the smell of steam and fire on the air that was spinning around them. He would have liked to join the pursuit.
This memory was important, and she had relived it many times, because it was that day that the Legio was born. Not the one where the big skeletons of adamantium of the titans had been sunk, nor the one where the reactor of the first machine had come alive by lighting up. But another day, as meaningful as the construction of machines. A titan was made of metal, just like flesh and blood.
This event concerned the flesh.
It was that day that the hunters were chosen.
In the early years of her flesh, Mohana was renowned among all Procon women for her piercing eyes. It was she who was aiming the best, who saw the farthest. She would have been a natural fit to join the priestesses of Pahkmetris, it was said. If things had been different, perhaps she would have joined the temple and raised herself to the rank of high priestess, like many elders in her family. But these times belonged to the past, before the foreigners came from the stars to tell her people that the gods did not exist, first by suggesting that they abandon them and then demand them.
The blessing of joining the Imperium had been the price of having to accept the imperial truth. And even if, decades later, during the Civil War, the Emperor's creed was ultimately just a story like any other, it was easy to rally to it. the time. Under the influence of this truth, the old habits and customs were dying so fast that the faith that could be felt by Mohana would certainly have completely extinguished, if there had been no other men, with another story, and another God.
After the free-merchants had marked the world of Procon for its attachment, the imperial iterators had arrived with their words of honey. Then came the priests of Mars.
The lies of men come to them so easily that they even forget that they do not tell the truth. After the iterators had denied the existence of the divine, the priests in red had spoken to them of a divine entity, made of mechanisms and knowledge. In the space of five years, two delegations, ostensibly obeying the same master, had delivered two divergent speeches. The wonder had turned into cynicism. Faced with this contradiction, and the way in which these men coveted her home covetously, Mohana Mankata Vi had sworn not to forget Pahkmetris, despite the claims of the iterators and technopters.
The day she was at the top of the cliff, the day the Legio was born, was the day Procon's houses had measured themselves to be favored by the god of machines. She herself was not allowed to take part in the race; on his planet, the path of women was traced differently from that of men. Nothing, however, forbade him to observe. What she did.
From its elevated position, Mohana Mankata Vi had a good view of the last stretch of the route: a long tongue covered with late summer grass, open in the middle of the forest, separating a line of rolling hills. another, where the domination of the trees began to give way to the steppe. The arrival post was on the plains a few kilometers away. The Knights were going to get there, she was certain.
She was not the only hunter to guess. Branches of the edge stirred fifty yards from her. A second rider came out of the forest and pushed her horse up to the top of the ridge, guiding it expertly between the hollows and traps of the rock.
Galiana Atum, out of breath, came to stop with Mohana Mankata Vi. Both were cousins to a distant degree, by ties of blood woven over a thousand years of intrigues. They were not friends. Although they were related, Galiana's house was not Mohana's. The father of Galiana was duke, that of Mohana was the king, and the rivalry between them was prolonged among their daughters.
-No sign yet? said Galiana. Rarely did they bother to employ formal terms of address. Both followed the huntress's voice. The temple uses mattered more than the seigniorial custom.
Mohana Mankata Vi nodded imperceptibly. She pointed towards the woods.
Galiana frowned and shielded her eyes.
-I see nothing.
"You're blind, then," said Vi. Viewing.
The movement of the trees became perceptible to both of them. Branches shook, crackled loudly, disturbed by the passage of something big through the forest. A tree crashed into a smashed sound of wood. A cloud of birds and leaves flew away, pushed by a plume of smoke sprung from the canopy, and carried by the wind, he went to the spur where they were. The smell of hot wet steam reached them. The nostrils of the horses opened. Hamaj shook his big head and began to neigh. The wake was heading toward the open ground, and was gaining speed.
-It is…? Galiana started.
"Yes," said Vi. Here they are.
The trees at the edge of the grassy tongue were spread in an explosion of fibers. A heavy, bipedal machine emerges, revealing itself to be an ancient mechanized combat harness five times the height of a man. He was a Knight, a legacy of this distant era of human settlement, carefully maintained over the centuries and led by the descendants of the noble houses of Procon. The Knights were the protectors of their world, and the reason why it had resisted the horrors of Long Night when so many others had died there.
The left hand of the Knight was a gigantic hydraulic fist, which spread the last branches that hung his torso. The right sported a spear support occupied by a simple metal shaft, without the explosive point that it would have brought to the war.
Against the conical guard of the weapon rested the trophy of the day, a hoop made of copper and serrated like a gear wheel, large enough for the spear of one of these armor to tear it off its hook. Whoever would bring him on arrival would get the best concessions from the mechanical priests in the coming negotiations.
Galiana stood up in her stirrups and let out a shout of joy. The bright painting of the hull proclaimed what was the lineage of the pilot. The Knight wore the emblem of the house Atum, her house. The personal heraldry of her brother Agali adorned the right shoulder.
-It is he who has it!
Mohana Mankata Vi stared at her scowl.
-The day is not over yet.
The engines in the back of the machine were blowing under the stress. From his exhausts rose a white smoke and vapors of alcohol. The Knight accelerated in a laborious race. The whistling pistons, the roaring engine, the feet pounding the ground with dull steps, he went back up the long strip of grass towards the plains, where the forest rolled up and surrendered to the golden fields and where the vast open expanses began. of their world. The terrain came down sharply not far away.
The Knight of Agali traveled a certain distance, enough for Mohana to worry that House Vi would lose this competition, until whistles sounded on both sides of the open strip. Two more Knights emerged from the forest, one carrying a pair of massive claws as weapons, the other a broad-armed sword and a shortened spear.
Both had black and silver plates, and the blue eagles of the Vi household.
The Knight with claws was that of Uncle Vakrian, the lancer was his brother Shunji. Mohana's uncle hit the side of Agali's machine in a high tackle. The clamor of the metal striking the metal echoed across the landscape, frightening swarms of avian creatures that flew away from the forest. The impact damaged both Knights. The shoulder of Vakrian's machine was torn off, scattering splinters of metal and paint. Half of the plate folded around the arm of the Chevalier d'Agali and was carried away, hindering his actions. Vakrian stepped aside in an unsteady arc, steam hissing through an exploded piston of his leg. The Knight of Agali staggered, walked a few steps before stumbling because of a broken axis of locomotion that hung from his hip. He collapsed violently, plowing a long furrow that made the black earth appear beneath the grass. His spear bent and was torn off. The gear escaped. Shunji skilfully retrieved it by threading it on his own spear and continued the race, the shiny trophy at the bottom of his trained weapon.
It was Mohana Mankata Vi's turn to smile.
-Oh no, said Galiana. He made it fall!
"It's rather my uncle who let him go," Vi said. Nobody will catch up with my brother anymore. He is the best Knight of the Kingdom.
More and more other Knights emerged from the woods. Some came through the gap that Agali had opened, others were attempting their own ambushes, but few were able to fly a Knight as well as Shunji. His dodged as well as an athlete of flesh and blood attempts to grab him. Suddenly there were about twenty machines on the grass strip, busy jostling each other and fighting each other. Towards the back of the line, a running Knight dipped his foot into a hidden water hole and made a catastrophic fall. Pieces flew from everywhere. The head came off and rolled over the grass carpet like a thrown ball. The pilot pulled himself out of the machine and lay in the mud a few moments before the tank exploded, sending a large ball of blue fire to the sky.
The other arched armor strode along the meadow to join the torrent of metal thrown at Shunji's heels. The Knights' race was shaking the ground, a persistent vibration, like the hooves of wild flocks at the time of the migrations. It was rare to see such a part of the nobility being out at the same time. The mechanical craftsmen of each dungeon struggled for weeks to prepare the old machines for the day. Their honor was at stake, and they wanted to show everyone their know-how, to prove that they were worthy of their function. They had as much to prove, if not more, than the Knights they served.
The glory would go to the victorious household, but the knowledge of the Mechanicum would go back to its craftsmen.
Galiana's face was disarray. Her brother's war machine had straightened up on one knee, but could not get up. The wood alcohol dripping from a leak in its tank ignited on contact with the boiling boiler. The Chevalier fell back with a loud crash. The escape hatch jumped, and Galiana's brother freed himself by throwing himself out. His bassinet fell half to his eyes, the feathers of his plume drenched by a leaking circuit. He looked ridiculous and Mohana laughed at him. His brother was ahead of his pursuers and had almost reached the meadow.
-I told you. I told you! she said, exulting. She gave a long hoot to her throat and threw her horse towards the edge of the headland and towards the pursuit. Hamaj jumped fearlessly on the sheer slope, the hoofs spread to be able to brake, scraping and driving down sheaves of gravel. Then they were at the bottom of the slope, having left behind them Galiana subjugated by the shared audacity of the girl and the horse, who were moving away among the trees.
Hamaj skilfully passed between the trunks without needing any indication from his mistress. A few exhilarating moments later, they had appeared on the grassy strip and Hamaj stretched his gallop, his head erect as if to show the galaxy what he was capable of. The scenery paraded around Mohana, the dark green streaks of trees and the golden ribbon of dry grass.
Mohana Mankata was laughing. The pollen floated in puffs around them. Hamaj passed the sagging carcass of the Chevalier d'Agali. The man was standing up and shouted at her passing something behind her that she did not hear. She leaned forward, pushing her horse towards the Knights who were running in front of them.
The Knights were fast, but Hamaj even more. His legs were underneath him as he galloped through their mechanical violence. This horse never feared anything. The great animals of the plain did not frighten him, nor the Knights made of steel.
Mohana rode between the fathers and sons of the households, while their machines were pushing each other. Their metallic fists carried resonant horions. The steam whistles blew the many notes of their range. A horse of lesser value would have panicked, but not Hamaj. He shook his head and galloped faster towards the front of the mechanical troop, whose Mohana's brother was setting the pace.
Mohana caught up with a Knight when the latter stumbled and collapsed, his heels flying over his back, so far that he nearly rolled over on himself. The screams from the broken cockpits and the fallen Knights chased her, challenged her, demanded that she go away.
She did not care about them.
The Shunji Knight was in front of it, close enough now that she could flex the articulated parts of her feet as they lifted themselves off the ground. Close enough to smell the smell of heated oil and the rich scent of burning alcohol, and to see the glistening pistons slipping into their cylinder.
Her race brought her to his brother's level. He must have seen it, for his Knight trumpeted a long war cry with his set of wind tubes. Hamaj shook his powerful head in response. Mohana smiled so hard, hurt her face. It was a moment of perfect triumph; her ascending home, brother and sister side by side. It seemed like an eternity, like every time she remembered it. In truth, the fleeting moment was cruelly torn from them.
The winged tip of a propelled harpoon pierced the chest of the Shunji Knight with the sound of a blacksmith's hammer striking a bell. Steam escaped in geysers in all directions through the broken pipes. The harness instantly lost its motive energy and sank on its depressurized pistons; his heavy feet scraped the ground. The opponents of the house Vi had not said their last word. Before the Knight of Shunji had completed his fall forward, the cable attached to the harpoon was stretched.
His machine was suddenly pulled back and torn off the ground. The effect on the one who harpooned it was equally devastating; the arm was torn off, which made him unbalanced, and the other Knight completed his race by falling forward into the earth. Shunji's one broke up.
Mohana bent down, avoiding a piece of flying armor plate that would have sliced her head. Burning jets of steam rose from the two wrecks. Sheaves of boiling water and oil rained all around.
The glorious race was over. Mohana pulled quickly on the reins of Hamaj. The other Knights were winning over her fallen brother; eager to get their hands on the trophy, two of them clashed and stomped on the remains of Shunji's attacker. One slipped over the steaming ruin of the first Knight, the other bumped against her, and stumbled on the path of a third fully loaded machine. The shock of their tons of metal rumbled over the planet.
The Knights slowed down, their heavy heads searching for the primitive self-sense of the fallen trophy.
Mohana saw him first, bouncing off, rolling on the short grass like a living thing fleeing his predators. She watched him fly, hitting a hump on the ground, its jagged edges shining in the light of day.
Before she knew what she was doing, she ran on Hamaj again. The stallion rushed to the trophy. The jagged wheel continued its course along the ground, and began to bow, close to stopping by rolling on the spot.
Mohana leaned low on the side of her horse. Rushes whipped her face. She reached out and grabbed the gear. It was almost too heavy for her to get up with him, so she twisted to one side, made Hamaj turn sharply to the right and took advantage of her own inertia to get back into the saddle.
She hung the serrated hoop on the pommel, and leaned against the wind.
"Course, Hamaj, run," she whispered close to her ear.
His steed developed his stride. Behind her, outraged machines of war tried to call her to order with loud whistles of steam.
The ground was shaking behind her. In front, the sky was drawing closer, a false horizon where the ground began to descend towards the plains proper. She was there in a few moments, and took the long gentle slope overlooking the sea of grass. One kilometer away, a vast geometric pattern had been carved into the vegetation, and the soil beneath it was baked like clay. In the center of this drawing, in the shadow of a vast vessel of emptiness, stood a golden arch large enough to allow a Knight to pass, and behind it, a platform welcoming the King and his court.
One of the war machines rushed past her, approached the ridge too quickly, lost her balance, and stumbled. She tumbled down the slope, scattering her components and armor plates. Hamaj dodged a piece of wreckage that was bouncing. The horse was brighter than the machines, but the machines were tireless and not him. She pushed him harder, to take advantage of the advantage that his four insured hooves gave them on the steep ground, as long as they still had it.
She was beating them. Which she was not supposed to do.
The bottom of the slope came soon. The ground gradually straightened, over a series of hummocks that soon unfolded to infinity, which she climbed and descended while riding, the giant vessel still in sight. The people of Procon knew stellar engines, but only rarely saw them. Occasionally, the Knights had to repel an invasion, or an itinerant trader would land on their world to offer wonderful goods, but none of these other ships, human or xenos, could compare to the majesty of the Mechanicum Of March.
The spacecraft was larger than the fortress of the Vi House, a hundred meters high, its leaning flanks struck by the singular heraldry of foreigners from abroad, whose most prominent symbol was the split skull. in two that they carried on all their equipment and their clothes, stamped again on all sides of the ship. His machine smell was bitter, far less obliging than the warm scents of the steam engines that propelled the Knights. And yet she rushed there in a total abandonment of herself. Mohana had crossed a line. There was nothing left to do but to bring his actions to an end.
The trampling of the running Knights was getting closer behind her, coming too late. She spun under the ark, and stopped her horse facing the platform in front of the great ship.
On the highest throne sat her father, the sovereign Rahajanan. Installed beside him on a metal seat made to be exactly the same size and weight as that of the king was the representative of the mechanical priests. Her father's face was unfathomable to most people, but she recognized in his eyes the signs of fury. That of the priest was hidden under his hood. Mohana had an impression of metal and old flesh glimpsed in the shadows. Long, segmented tentacles danced like snakes around his back. She suspected him of appearing monstrous under his coat, like one of the iron men of the old stories, whose sackings had thrown down the kingdoms of the ancients. The three greatest lords of Procon were on the floor below that of the king, at the head of the three major households, surpassed only by the house Vi itself. A gathering of women and lesser courtiers was seated in a closed lodge on the lowest floor. Around the legate of the Mechanicum stood a striking group of machine-men, who had been built rather than wild, like a collection of statues of ill-considered proportions.
Mohana raised the heavy hoop with both hands, and presented it to everyone.
"In the name of the house Vi, I claim the patronage of the Mechanicum of Mars, and the favor of the world-forge of Tigris.
She threw the gear wheel on the ground, on the bare, baked ground. It could have been a bomb as well.
Her father's position was compromised. He could not refuse this victory, at the risk of casting doubt on the authenticity of the whole event, but the fact of supporting her actions would have been a mark of disrespect towards his dukes. In one way or the other, the honor of the Vi house was in the balance. His cold eyes promised her terrible remonstrances. The royal court was in shock. All stared at her in disbelief and murmured, hiding behind their hands.
The bare metal and the flesh faces of the Mechanicum delegation could not have been any different from those of Procon's court. These machine and man mixtures observed him with clinical coldness. Lights flashed instead of eyes. Lines of text scrolled on glass displays embedded in their chests.
"Interesting," said the representative.
The king's head was turned towards his host, not wishing to react first.
"This competition is null and void," said the Duke of Kandaj. It had to be a demonstration of talent of the Knights, no equestrian know-how!
-The talent of the Knights has been in default. It was the huntress who won, said Mohana, without being able to add anything else, terrified as she was now. She should not have run to the Knights. Her impulsive decision to pick up the trophy was going to cost her life.
The court was growing agitated. Knights arrived and came to stop around the ark. The steam rumbled from their overheated engines. Cockpits traps were thrown back. The pilots tore off the interface cables of their throne to proudly stand up, and condemn it from their height.
"My daughter is of great courage, and full of resources," said the King. Here she puts us all in embarrassment! he continued indulgently, starting to laugh, though everyone who knew him would have seen the lie behind his expression.
No one else laughs. A heavy silence fell on the assembly, crushing even the wind.
Light chimes and a rustling of mechanisms came from one of the members of the delegation. Several exchanged between them a disturbing chirp, evoking that of the birds, but horribly different.
The emissary was the first to pronounce human words.
"I testify that she brought us the trophy, and that she won," he said. I declare the house Vi victorious.
According to their expressions, the characters of the nobility had expected the Mechanicum to cry foul fault, but the mechanical priests did not seem at least disturbed.
Mohana was also a princess, versed in the arts of the state, trained for the day she would enter the third epoch of her life, where her children would have grown up and where she herself would no longer be fruitful. Older women spent their time smoothing and influencing political processes in the interest of their homes; never openly, always behind closed doors.
She understood the odd she had just committed. If the emissary thought that the competition had been won in the rules, it would go up all the other houses against theirs. Her household would be the first to acquire the knowledge promised by the Mechanicum, and would have the honor of going to war in the stars, but it would leave them at the mercy of other homes for generations. Her act had made her family dependent on the Mechanicum for his protection.
But her father was not a fool either. A fined expression pointed in the eyes of the king.
A second realization hit her, even more serious. She saw at this moment, in that air on her father's face, that she had condemned herself forever by this moment of pride.
Ruler Rahajanan opened his mouth to speak.
+ Great Mother, + growled a mechanical voice without emotion. + It's time to wake up. +
