"Brackett, Leigh - Skaith 2 - Hounds Of Skaith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brackett Leigh)
They had helped themselves to what they needed from the Citadel before Stark put it to the torch. Their weapons were of excellent quality, but Skaith's poverty-stricken technology, sliding backward through long centuries of upheaval and dwindling resources, could now offer nothing more sophisticated than the sword, the knife and the bow. Stark, being a mercenary by trade, was proficient with all these; the wars he fought in were small and highly personal affairs, involving tribes or small nations on as-yet-uncivilized worlds beyond the fringes of the Galactic Union. Simon Ashton, who had done all his fighting years ago and in uniform, would have felt happier with something more modern.
"We have the hounds," Stark said, and pointed to a rise ahead. "Perhaps we can see something from there."
They had been driving hard ever since they left the smoking ruins of the Citadel. The passes through the Bleak Mountains led them first north and then east, and the mountain chain itself made a great bend to the southeast, so that the lower range now stood like a wall at their right hands. The Wandsmen's Road came up from Skeg straight across these eastern deserts, a much shorter route than the one Stark had followed on his own journey north from Skeg to find the hidden Citadel where Ashton was being held. He had had perforce to go first to Irnan, which was somewhat westerly, and then more westerly still, with his five comrades, to Izvand in the Barrens. After that he had made a long traverse in the creaking wagons of the trader Amnir of Komrey, who had taken them to sell for a high price to the Lords Protector, through the darklands on an ancient road. Stark's way up from Skeg had described roughly the curve of a broken bow. Now he was going south again along the straight line of the bowstring.
He whacked his shaggy little mount to a faster pace. At first, where the frozen ground was hard and stony, they had made good time. Now they were among the dunes, and the Harsenyi beasts with their sharp little hoofs were laboring.
They topped the rise and halted. By the time the westerlies came across the barrier mountains, they had dropped most of their moisture. In place of the snows on the other side there was dun-colored sand with only a splotching and powdering of white. The air was no less cold. And in all that bitter landscape, nothing moved. The cairns that marked the Wandsmen Road marched away out of sight. The Lords Protector were still well ahead.
"For old men," said Stark, "they're traveling well." "They're tough old men. Let the beasts rest a bit, Eric. It won't help anyone if we kill them."
The exodus of the Lords Protector and their servants had taken more animals than the Harsenyi could well spare. Only fear of the Northhounds had induced them to part with three more, two for riding and one to carry supplies. They were strong little things, with thick hair that hung down as though they were wearing blankets. Bright button eyes peered through tangled fringes. Sharp horns were tipped with painted balls to prevent hooking. Their air of patient martyrdom was well spiced with malice. Still, they bore their burdens willingly enough; and Stark reckoned they would do, for the time being.
"We'll borrow some from Ferdias. But we must catch up with Gelmar before he reaches the first wayhouse. If we don't, we'll never see him, not in this desert."
"Gelmar won't be sparing his animals, either. Ferdias will have sent one of the Yur ahead to tell him what happened. He'll know you're coming after him."
Stark said impatiently, "He's traveling with a badly wounded man." Halk, the tall swordsman, albeit no friend of Stark's, had come north with him for the sake of Irnan, and he was one of the two survivors of the original five. The other was the wise woman Gerrith. They had been caught with their comrades in Gelmar's trap at Thyra, and Halk was sorely hurt in that battle.
"He must be carried in a litter. Gelmar can't travel too fast."
"I don't think you can count on that. I believe Gelmar would sacrifice Halk to keep you from taking Gerrith back. She's a vital part of their whole strategy against Irnan." Ashton paused, frowning. "Even so, I think the Wandsmen would be willing to sacrifice Gerrith if they could take you. Ferdias had the right of it, you know. It was madness to try and turn an entire planet upside down for the sake of one man."
"I've lost two fathers," Stark said, and smiled. "You're the only one I've got left." He kicked his mount forward. "We'll rest farther on."
Ashton followed, looking in some wonderment at this great dark changeling he had brought into the world of men. He was able to remember with vivid clarity the first time he had seen Eric John Stark, whose name then was N'Chaka, Man-Without-a-Tribe. That had been on Mercury, in the blazing, thundering valleys of the Twilight Belt where towering peaks rose up beyond the shallow atmosphere and the mountain-locked valleys held death in an amazing variety of forms. Ashton was young then, an agent of Earth Police Control, which had authority over the mining settlements. EPC was also responsible for the preservation of the aboriginal tribes, a scanty population of creatures kept so much occupied with the business of survival that they had not had time to make that last sure step across the borderline between animal and human.
Word had come that wildcat miners were committing depredations. Ashton arrived too late to save the band of hairy aboes, but the miners had taken a captive.
A naked boy, fierce and proud in the cage where he was penned. His skin was burned dark by the terrible sun, scarred by the accidents of daily living in that cruel place. His shaggy hair was black, his eyes very light in colorЧthe clear, innocent, suffering eyes of an animal. The miners had tormented him with sticks until he bled. His belly was pinched with hunger, his tongue swollen with thirst. Yet he watched his captors with those cold clear eyes, unafraid, waiting for a chance to kill.
Ashton took him out of the cage. Thinking back on the time and effort required to civilize that young tiger, to force him to accept the hateful fact of his humanity, Ashton sometimes wondered that he had possessed enough patience to accomplish the task.
Records of Mercury Metals and Mining had given the boy's identity and his name, Eric John Stark. Supposedly, he had died along with his parents in the fall of a mountain wall that wiped out the mining colony where he was born. In fact, the aboes had found him and reared him as their own, and Ashton knew that no matter how human his fosterling Eric might look on the outside, the primitive N'Chaka was still there, close under the skin.
That was how Stark had been able to face the Northhounds and kill their king-dog Flay. That was why they followed him now, accepting him as their leader, beast to beast. Seeing the nine great white brutes running beside Stark, Ashton shivered slightly, sensing the eternal stranger in this, the only son he had ever had.
Yet there was love between them. Stark had come of his own free will, to fight his way across half this lunatic world of Skaith and free Ashton from the Lords Protector at the Citadel.
Now a long road lay before them, full of powerful enemies and unknown dangers. In his heart Ashton felt sure they would never make it back to Skeg, where the starport offered the sole means of escape. And he felt a moment of anger that Stark had put himself in this position. For my sake, Ashton thought. And how do you think I will feel when I see you die, for my sake?
But he kept this thought to himself.
When their mounts had begun to flag noticeably, Stark allowed a halt. Ashton watered the riding animals and fed them with cakes of compressed lichens. Stark fed the hounds sparingly with strips of dried meat brought from the Citadel. Gerd was still muttering about Things, though the landscape remained empty. The men chewed their own tough rations, moving about as they did so to stretch muscles cramped by long hours in the saddle.
Stark said, "How far have we come?"
"You're sure there isn't any other way to go, to get ahead of Gelmar?"
"The road was laid out in the beginning along the shortest route between Yurunna and the Citadel. It hardly bends an inch in a hundred miles until it hits those mountain passes. No shortcuts. Besides, if you lose the guideposts you're done for. Only the Hooded Men and the Runners know their way around the desert." Ashton drank water from a leather bottle and handed it to Stark. "I know how you feel about the woman, and I know how important it is to keep Gelmar from taking her back to Irnan. But we've all got a long way to go yet."
Stark's eyes were cold and distant. "If Gelmar reaches the wayhouse before us, he will get fresh mounts. The tall desert beasts, which are much faster than these. Am I right?"
"Yes."
"He will also see to it that there are no fresh mounts for us, and the tribesmen will be warned to look for us."
Ashton nodded.
"Perhaps, with the hounds, we might overcome those difficulties. Perhaps. But the next wayhouse is seven days beyond?"
"Not hurrying."
"And Yurunna is seven days beyond that."
"Again, not hurrying."
"Yurunna is a strong city, you said."
"Not large, but it stands on a rocky island in the middle of a fat oasisЧor what passes for a fat oasis hereaboutsЧand there's only one way up. The wild tribesmen look upon it with lust, but it's so well guarded they don't even raid much around the oasis. The Yur are bred there, the Well-Created. Some more of the Wandsmen's nastiness; I don't believe in breeding humans like prize pigs even to be the perfect servants of the Lords Protector. The Northhounds are bred there, too, and sent north along the road to the Citadel as they're needed. How would meeting their old kennelmates and the Houndmaster affect your friends?"
"I don't know. In any case, the hounds alone would not be useful against a city."
He put away the bottle and called the pack. The men climbed again onto the saddle-pads.
"There's another good reason for hurrying," Stark said. He looked at the wasteland, at the dim sky where Old Sun slid heavily toward night. "Unless we want to spend the rest of our lives on Skaith, we had better get back to Skeg before the Wandsmen decide to send the ships away and close the starport down for good."
3
Starships were a new thing on Skaith. Only in the last dozen years had they arrived, a shattering astonishment out of the sky.
Before that, for its billions of years of existence, the system of the ginger star had lived solitary in the far reaches of the galaxy, untouched by the interstellar civilization that spread across half the Milky Way from its center at Pax, chief world of Vega. The Galactic Union had even embraced the distant little world of Sol. But the Orion Spur, of which Skaith and her primary were citizens, had remained largely unexplored.
In her young days, Skaith was rich, industrialized, urbanized and fruitful. But she never achieved space-flight; and when the ginger star grew weak with age and the long dying began, there was no escape for her people. They suffered and died, or if they were strong enough, they suffered and survived.
Gradually, out of the terrible upheavals of the Wandering, a new social system arose.
The consul of the Galactic Union, who spent a few brief hopeful years at Skeg, wrote in his report:
The Lords Protector, reputed to be "undying and unchanging," were apparently established long ago by the then ruling powers as a sort of superbenevolence. The Great Migrations were beginning, the civilizations of the north were breaking up as the people moved away from the increasing cold, and there was certain to be a time of chaos with various groups competing for new lands. Then and later, when some stability was reestablished, the Lords Protector were to prevent a too great trampling of the weak by the strong. Their law was simple: Succor the weak, feed the hungry, shelter the homelessЧstriving always toward the greatest good of the greatest number.
It appears that through the centuries this law has been carried far beyond its original intent. The Farers and the many smaller nonproductive fragments of this thoroughly fragmented culture are now the greater number, with the result that the Wandsmen, in the name of the Lords Protector, hold a third or more of the population in virtual slavery, to supply the rest.
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