"Brackett, Leigh - Skaith 2 - Hounds Of Skaith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brackett Leigh)

He was staring, as they all were, at the bodies of the Runners.
"The Northhounds did this?"
Gelmar said, "Yes."
The Hooded Man made a sign in the air and muttered something, glancing sidelong at the great hounds. Then he straightened and spoke to Gelmar. But his cold gaze had turned to Stark.
"In the house are two men and a woman who came just before you. The gray-headed man we saw before, when the Wandsmen brought him north some months ago. They admitted they had been your prisoners. They told us that this stranger leads the Northhounds, so that they no longer obey you, and that we must take orders from him. We know, of course, that this is a lie."
He tossed back his cloak to show a sword, short and wickedly curved, and a knife whose iron grip looped over the knuckles for striking and was set with cruel studs.
"How do you wish us to take this man, LordЧalive or dead?"
8
Gerd moved his head and growled, catching the man's thought.
N'Chaka?
Send fear. Him! Not kill.
Gerd's hellhound gaze fixed on this tall chief of the Ochar, First-Come of the Seven Hearths of Kheb, and crumpled him sobbing into the dust like a terror-stricken child. His companions were too astonished to move.
"No!" cried Gelmar. "Stop it, Gerd!"
The hound whined irritably. N'Chaka?
Stark dropped his sword and caught Gerd's head, both sides, by the skin of his jowls.
Wandsmen not threatened. N'Chaka is. Who do you follow?
Have it out now, Stark thought. Now. Or we're back where we started, all of usЧGerrith, myself, Simon, HalkЧall prisoners of the Wandsmen.
He drew houndskin tight between his fingers, stared into hot hound eyes.
Send fear.
The Ochar chief gasped and groveled in the sand.
"No," said Gelmar, who came and put his hand on Gerd's shoulder. "I forbid you, Gerd. You belong to us, to the Wandsmen. Obey me."
The Ochar chief ceased to struggle. He continued to sob. The three other men had moved away from him, as if he had been suddenly bewitched and they feared to be caught by the same spell. They appeared bewildered, unable to believe what they saw.
Gerd made an almost human cry. N'Chaka! Not know. He was tired, and the fight had left him edgy and upset. The smell of blood was strong. He pulled against Stark's hands. He threw himself from side to side, and his claws tore the dust.
Stark held him. Choose, Gerd. Whom do you follow?
A dangerous light had begun to kindle in Gerd's eyes. Abruptly the hound stood still, quivering in every muscle.
Stark braced himself.
The pack, by custom, would not interfere. The matter was between himself and Gerd. But they would see to it that no one else interfered, in a physical sense. There would be no danger of a knife in the back.
"Kill, Gerd," said Gelmar, his hand on the hound's shoulder. "This man will lead you all to death."
And Stark said, You cannot kill me, Gerd. Remember Flay.
The bolt of fear struck him. It shriveled his brain and turned his bones to water. It set his heart pounding until it threatened to burst against his ribs. But he held his grip. And a fierce cry came from out of his deep past, I am N'Chaka. I do not die.
The fear kept on.
Stark's pale eyes changed. His mouth changed. A sound came from his throat. He was no longer seeing Gerd as Gerd. He was seeing older, faraway things, the Fear-BringersЧthe eternal enemy with all his many faces of dread, hunger, storm, quake, deadly night, deadlier day, the stalking hunter snuffling after heart-blood.
All life is fear. You have never felt it, hound. Death never feels it. Hound, I will teach you fear.
His grip shifted suddenly to Gerd's throat, gathered loose skin on either side, gathered and twisted, twisted and gathered, until the hound began to strangle, and still his fingers worked, and he said:
Do you see, Gerd, how it feels to die?
N'Chaka...!
The fear stopped.
Gerd dropped down, jaws wide, muzzle drawn in a snarling rictus. He put his chin on the ground.
Follow ... strongest.
Stark let go. He straightened up. His eyes were still strange, all the humanness gone out of them. Gelmar stepped back, as though retreating from something unclean.
But he said, "You will not always be the strongest, Stark. Human or beast, your flesh is vulnerable. One day it will bleed, and the hounds will tear you."
The Ochar chief had risen to his knees. He wept tears of rage and shame.
"Do not let me live," he said. "You have put disgrace upon me before my tribesmen."
Stark said, "There is no disgrace. Is one man stronger than all these?" He pointed to the Runner bodies.
The Ochar chief got slowly to his feet. "No. But just now you withstood."
"I am not of your world. No man born of Skaith can stand against the Northhounds. And lest your tribesmen think shame of you, I will show them the truth of that."
Gerd squatted on his haunches, stretching his neck and hacking. Stark called the pack and they came around him, eyes averted lest they should seem to challenge him.
He gave an order, and the three Ochar were smitten with a palsy. They opened their mouths beneath the orange wrappings and cried out. They ran stumbling away.
"Now," said Stark to the chief, "we will go to the house. Gelmar, take your people. Walk ahead of us." To the Ochar he said, "How are you called?"
"Ekmal."