"Baxter, Stephen - Huddle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

All, except for Frazil and No-Sun and One-Tusk.

No-Sun, his mother, said, "You'll die if you go alone. I suppose it's my fault
you're like this."

One-Tusk said, "Do you really think there are people in the mountains?"

"Please don't go," Frazil said. "This is our summer. You will waste your life."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You're the Bull. You have everything we can offer."

"It's not enough."

He turned his back, faced the mountains and began to walk.

He walked past the droppings and blood smears and scars in the ice, the evidence
of humans.

He stopped and looked back.

The people had lined up to watch him go -- all except for two men who were
fighting viciously, no doubt contesting his succession, and a man and woman who
were coupling vigorously. And except for Frazil and No-Sun and One-Tusk, who
padded across the ice after him.

He turned and walked on, until he reached bare, untrodden ice.

After the first day of walking, the ice got thinner.

At last they reached a place where there was no free water beneath, the ice
firmly bonded to a surface of dark rock. And when they walked a little further,
the rock bed itself emerged from beneath the ice.

Night-Dawn stared at it in fascination and fear. It was black and deep and hard
under his feet, and he missed the slick compressibility of ice.

The next day they came to another ice pool: smaller than their own, but a
welcome sight nonetheless. They ran gleefully onto its cool white surface. They
scraped holes into the ice, and fed deeply.

They stayed a night. But the next day they walked onto rock again, and
Night-Dawn could see no more ice ahead.

The rock began to rise, becoming a slope.

They had no food. Occasionally they took scrapes at the rising stone, but it
threatened to crack their teeth.