"Chalker, Jack L - Rings 1 - Lords Of The Middle Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

passion, channeling all his energies into productive paths to stave off thoughts
of suicide or tinges of madness. Perhaps he was mad. He had often suspected it,
but he knew they wouldn't flag someone for a madness that actually increased
work and production.
Her name was Cloud Dancer, and for two days he'd tried to make her life
miserable to no avail. She was cute, thin, a head shorter than he, and she
appeared slightly built although it was hard really to tell in that
loose-fitting, traditional dress she wore. She was thirty but looked younger by
far, and if inquisitiveness was any indication, she was bright as well. She was
also something of a dynamo: Any Outsider notions that native American women were
passive would be blown out of the water in ten minutes with her.
She had taken one look at his little hogan and exclaimed, "This house smells as
if only dead things lie within it! I do not understand why men will abide filth
when it takes but a few moments to shake what is nature back to the winds and
let the spirits of life crowd out the dead space!"
His protests that he didn't mind things the way they were fell on deaf ears, and
soon she was taking out his blankets and extra clothing to be washed or aired as
the material required. When she tried to get his straw mattress out the door, he
finally had to help, and he found himself involved in the cleanup if only to
save what was important to him. She also brought some earthen cookware and some
food from the Families' camp and proved a very fine cook indeed. Her seasonings
were expert, though the spices were as hot as hell to his palate, which was
accustomed much of the time to blander fare. But he wasn't going to admit to
that to her.
Until Withdrawal, he really couldn't provide for himself out here in his own
native land. There was the irony of it, and also why so much had to come from
the Four Families at the start. His salt box, large enough for a medium-sized
deer, was full, all right -- of salt. He found himself being insulted and badgered
to go hunt for himself, and while he knew he wasn't up for deer and particularly
not for buffalo, he did actually manage to catch three fairly good sized catfish
in the river.
The fact was, he was beginning to like her and to like a little of the order and
domesticity she brought. It was almost like being married, although she went
home at night and they did not, of course, share the pleasures of the bed. It
was over the hot, spiced fish stew she'd created that he finally gave in and
warmed to her. She spoke only Hyiakutt and had lived her life with the tribe,
but she had an odd mixture of old and new in her world view. She lived in a
supernatural world where spirits dwelled in everything, yet she knew there was a
wider world and a different one.
In some ways, she was also a victim of that culture. She had married at fifteen,
not an uncommon thing in the tribe. It had not been an arranged marriage, as was
the custom, because she had lost her father a year before in an accident and her
mother had died even earlier in childbirth. The child had not survived, either.
There were no orphans in the tribe; she had been adopted by close kin, but her
uncle was old and partly crippled and poor. Screams Like Thunder wasn't the
ideal catch, either; an older man not given to ambition and with a nasty temper,
he was not a warrior and hadn't really ever wanted to be. He was, in fact, a
Curer, which was really an assistant to the medicine man, keeping all the
paraphernalia in good shape and on hand and aiding in the preparation of herbs
and other medicinals. It was not exactly a high-ranking job, but it was as high