"Cook, Glen - Darkwar 01 - Doomstalker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

There would be compensations. A wider field to range beyond the stockade. Chances to visit the stone packfast down the river. A slim maybe of a chance to go on down the road to one of the cities the tradermales told tales about.

Slim chance indeed. While she clung to them and made vows, in her most secret heart she knew her dreams were that only. Huntresses from the upper Ponath remained what they were born. It was sad.

There were times she actually wished she were male. Not often, for the lot of the male was hard and his life too often brief, if he survived infancy at all. But only males became traders, only males left their packsteads behind and wandered where they would, carrying news and wares, seeing the whole wide world.

It was said that the tradermales had their own packfasts where no females ever went, and their own special mysteries, and a language separate even from the different language used among themselves by the males she knew.

All very marvelous, and all beyond her reach. She would live and die in the Degnan packstead, like her dam, her granddam, and so many generations of Degnan females before them. If she remained quick and strong and smart, she might one day claim this loghouse for her own, and have her pick of males with whom to mate. But that was all.

She crouched in shadows with Kublin, fearing her deadly plain tomorrows, and both listened to inner voices, trying to track their dam's party. Marika sensed only that they were north and east of the packstead, moving slowly and cautiously.



Horvat, eldest of the loghouse males, called dinner time. The keeping of time was one of the mysteries reserved to his sex. Somewhere in a small, deep cellar beneath the north end of the house, reached by a ladder, was a device by which time was measured. So it was said. None but the males ever went down there, just as none but the huntresses descended into the cellar beneath the southern end of the loghouse. Marika never had been down, and would not be allowed till the older huntresses were confident she would reveal nothing of what she learned and saw. We are strange, secretive creatures, Marika reflected.

She peeped over the edge of the loft and saw that none of the adults were hastening to collect their meals. "Come on, Kublin. We can be first in line." They scrambled down, collected their utensils quickly.

Two score small bodies poured after them, having made the same discovery. The young seldom got to the cookpots early. Oftentimes they had to make do with leavings, squabbling among themselves, with the weakest getting nothing at all.

Marika filled her cup and bowl, ignoring the habitual disapproving scowls of the males serving. They had power over pups, and used it as much as they dared. She hurried to a shadow, gobbled as fast as she could. There were no meth manners. Meth gobbled fast, ate more if they could, because there was no guarantee there was going to be another meal anytime soon-even in the packsteads, where fate's fickleness had been brought somewhat under control.

Kublin joined Marika. He looked proud of himself. Clinging to her shadow, he had been fast enough to get in ahead of pups who usually shoved him aside. He had filled his cup and bowl near spilling deep. He gobbled like a starved animal. Which he often was, being too weak to seize the best.

"They're worried bad," Marika whispered, stating the obvious. Any meth who did not jump at a meal had a mind drifting a thousand miles away.

"Let's get some more before they wake up."

"All right."

Marika took a reasonable second portion. Kublin loaded up again. Horvat himself stepped over and chided them. Kublin just put his head down and doggedly went on with his plunder. They returned to the shadow. Marika ate more leisurely, but Kublin gobbled again, perhaps afraid Horvat or another pup would rob him.

Finished, Kublin groaned, rubbed his stomach, which actually protruded now. "That's better. I don't know if I can move. Do you feel anything yet?"

Marika shook her head. "Not now." She rose to take her utensils to the cleaning tub, where snow had been melted into wash water. The young cared for their own bowls and utensils, female or not. She took two steps. Maybe because Kublin had mentioned it and had opened her mind, she was in a sensitive state. Something hit her mind like a blow. She had felt nothing so terrible since that day she had read Pohsit. She ground her teeth, on a shriek, not wanting to attract attention. She fell to her knees.

"What's the matter, Marika?"

"Be quiet!" If the adults noticed . . . If Pohsit . . . "I-I felt something bad. A touch. One of them . . . one of our huntresses is hurt. Bad hurt." Pain continued pouring through the touch, reddening her vision. She could not shut it out. The loghouse seemed to twist somehow, to flow, to become something surreal. Its so well known shapes became less substantial. For an instant she saw what looked like ghosts, a pair of them, bright but almost shapeless, drifting through the west wall as though that did not exist. They bobbed about, and for a second Marika thought them like curious pups. One began to drift her way as though aware of her awareness. Then the terrible touch ended with the suddenness of a dry stick breaking. The skewed vision departed with it. She saw no ghosts anymore, though for an instant she thought she sensed a feathery caress. She was not sure if it was upon her fur or her mind.

"They're in trouble out there, Kublin. Bad trouble."

"We'd better tell Pobuda."

"No. We can't. She wouldn't believe me. Or she would want to know how I knew. And then Pohsit . . . " She could not explain the exact nature of her fear. She was certain it was valid, that her secret talents could cause her a great deal of grief.

But Kublin did not demand an explanation. He knew her talents, and he was intimate with fear. Its presence was explanation enough for him.

"I'm scared, Kublin. Scared for Dam."