"Adams, Robert - Horseclans 01 - The Coming of the Horseclans" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)

Milo treated the disgraced man to a look which bespoke icy contempt. Then he stated, "Though you yap like a cur, and conduct yourself like a swine, yet you are a man. All my kindred know that there are two kinds of men: true men and Dirtmen. Since you are not the one, you must be the other. So, Dirtman, you shall be served in the same fashion as were the Dirtmen the tribe took at the Ehleenoee camp.

"You are wearing all the clothing a Dirtman needs. In addition, you shall receive a silver trade-corn, a knife, a water bottle and a wallet of food. Take them and journey far and fast, forЧas you are a DirtmanЧyou are the enemy of all true men."

Unconsciously, Rik wiped the back of his hand across his bloody chin and looked down at his red-smeared knuckles. With a bellow, he went berserk! All in the blinking of an eye, his right foot lashedЧheel foremostЧbetween the legs of the chief who had struck him and, as that man clutched his crotch and doubled in agony, Rik's left fore arm smashed the bridge of the other's nose while his right tore saber from its sheath. Before Milo's blade was half-drawn, more than a foot of Rik's weapon was protruding from the War Chief's back, just below the shoulder blade! Then, Mara's dirk found the berserker's throat and he released his sword hilt to clutch at his gush ing wound and stumble backward, off the dais. Within fractions of seconds, all that lay beneath the dripping sabers of the vengeful chiefs was a bundle of bloody rags and raw bone and hacked flesh.

Panting, the chiefs of the council looked to the dais. Several dropped their swords! Their War Chief, whose last words they had expected to soon hear, was not only still on his feet, but was presently engaged in carefully pulling the sharp saber out of his chest!

The forty-two chiefs were typical specimens of their rugged race. Born to frequent privation and casual violence, they were weaned to weapons-skills and they were a-horse more often than afoot; armed with bow or spear or ax or saber, they knew fear of neither man nor beast. But this . . . this watching of a man, who should be dead, still standing and withdrawing the steel from his heart, was more than unnerving. The sensation evoked by such an unnatural occurrence was terror, icy-cold, crawling, nameless terror!

As many appeared on the very verge of precipitate withdrawalЧnot to say, flightЧBlind Hari stood, raised his arms to draw attention to himself, and began to broad-beam a soothing reassurance. Sensing it, Milo and Mara, Horsekiller and Old-Cat added their own efforts. Than Hari spoke, softly but aloud. "Kindred, my children, draw near and put up your steel. There are great and good tidings for you and your people. For many reasons, the telling of them has long been delayed, but now the time is come that you should know."

Chapter 13

Horse shall choose and man shall choose Be, neither, slave nor master. . . .

ЧFrom "The Couplets of the Law"

Later, Milo and Mara and Hari and the two cats were once more closeted in the small meeting chamber. On the table were three drinking cups, an ewer of Ehleenoee wine, a slab of cheese, and a bowl of wild apples.

As he accepted a hunk of cheese from the point of Hari's knife, Old-Cat mindspoke Milo. "Though she cannot be slain or injured, it is true, do you think it was wise to allow the God-child to return to the people who so ill-used her, God Milo?"

Milo halved an apple, passed one piece to Mara, and bit into the other. "I can think of no better nor safer place for her, Old-Cat. My race is not completely immune to death, you know, there do exist ways to kill us and the Ehleenoee have learned them all. I cannot imagine how she managed to live among them undetected, as long as she did. What the Horseclans call God-kinship, the Ehleenoee and many other peoples call 'curse'Чthe Curse of the Undying. They all hate and fear my kind. To them, we are incredibly evil devils, to be sought out and slain slowly and horribly, for we feel pain quite as keenly as do other living creatures.

"No, Old-Cat, of all the many races of man, only among the men of the Horseclans can little Aldora expect life. Since her future lies with them, it were well that she came to know them. It is unfortunate that she had to learn first of the bad of Horsepeople; but let her, now, learn of the good."

After Hari had fulfilled Horsekiller's request for a bit of the sheep-cheese, his hand moved unerringly to his wine cup. While sipping, he mindspoke, "Still, Milo, you might have kept her here. Her mind needs training, if she is too advance to her full powers. Good and well-meaning as they are, what can Hwahlis and his clan provide that we could not?"

Milo concentrated his gaze on the surface of the resinous wine in his cup. "Did you ever sire and rear children, Hari?"

There was a twinge of ancient pain the bard's mind. "No. When I was a young man, I took as wife a lovely maiden of the Clan Koopuh, one Kairi. In the two years before she conceived of me, she became all things, all that ever I could want or need. When she died a-borning Чshe and the child togetherЧI never again felt desire for, and never took, another womanЧwife nor slave."

While Old-Cat nuzzled Hari's thigh sympathetically, Milo went on. "You have never reared a child, Hari, nor has Mara. I have, but it was centuries ago and in another world. Aldora is of, and must learn to live in, this world. For all that she is, she is still a child and she needs the love and guidance and companionship of parents and a familyЧand she needs them now. As for training her mind, that can come later, one thing that my clan never lacks of is time!"

One morning about two weeks after the event-filled day of her adoption, Aldora Linsee awakened to the realization that she had never in her life felt happier or more secure. All her icy fears of these people, acquired by dint of the sufferings experienced at their hands, she found to have completely dissipated in the warm glow of the very real and oft demonstrated love which her new family and clan Чall members of themЧlavished on her; and, thanks to " her daily-increasing mental abilities, she was keenly aware of the verity and depth of their feelings.

She had not yet been a year old when one of the contagions, which swept the cities of the Ehleenoee every summer (being especially virulent in dry summers), had carried off her mother. So, having been reared almpst entirely by slave-women, she had never known what it was to have a mother. Now she had twoЧTsheri, Hwahlis' eldest wife, and BetiЧon a full-time basis, in addition to every matron in the clan, part-tune. Also, there was the eldest of Hwahlis' concubines, Neekohl.

Aldora's natural father had never really liked females, considering them a necessary evil. He married and begat only because it was expected of him. After his wife's un-mourned death, he devoted very nearly all his waking hours to his minions, his peers, his commercial enterprises, and his sonsЧin descending order. In the few scraps of time he grudgingly allotted to his daughter, he was coldly correct and stiffly formalЧeven for his tightly controlled and undemonstrative race. He did not like to have to touch females anyway, and if any had ever suggested that he hold or kiss his little girl, he would very probably have vomited.

Hwahlis, on the other hand, was a typical nomad warriorЧvolatile, uninhibited, emotional, intense. He was open-handedly generous, not only with his personal effects and possessions, but with his love, of which he seemed to have an endless supply. For the first few days, he had been scrupulously careful to neither touch nor kiss this concubine-become-daughter, lest his motives be misunderstoodЧa thing that his sensitive soul could not have borne, so filled with repentance was it already. And, to a man to whom visible demonstration of love was an integral and necessary part of life, this torture was unbelievably severe. It could not last and it didn't.

By the third morning after the day-and-night-long chief-feast, most of the tribe had more-or-less recovered and camp-life had resumed near-normality. Aldora did not know how to ride and for one who was to be a horseclanswoman, this was a calamitous condition which could not be allowed to continue. So, mounted behind and clinging tightly to Beti, she arrived at the tribal horse-herd to choose and be accepted by two or three horses. As they drew near to the herd, they were mindspoken by a late-adolescent female cat, preening herself on a hummock, from which she was afforded a clear view of the portion of the herd to which she had been assigned.

"Greet-the-Sun, Cat-sisters. Have the two-legs at last recuperated from the sickness of cloudy minds and shaky legs and bad bellies?"

"Yes, we have all recuperated, sister-mine, and it only took two days. But if you make yourself anymore beautiful, it will take you the best part of three moons to 'recuperate' from your 'bad belly'!" replied Beti, laughingly.

The cat gave vent to a shuddering purr. "Wind and Sun grant that that kind of sickness come quickly. Already poor Mole-Fur is nearly twenty-four moons, and she has no desire to die a maiden."