"Cooper, Susan - Dark is Rising 04 - The Grey King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooper Susan)

Will clambered obediently up into the front of the Land-Rover again; it seemed a warm, cosy little box, after the chill wind blowing the drizzle into his face out on the road. There was no sound, there among the open fields under the looming hills, but the soft whine of the wind in telephone wires, and an occasional deep baaa from a distant sheep. And the rattle of a spanner; Rhys was undoing the bolts that secured the spare wheel to the back door.

Will leaned his head back against the seat, closing his eyes. His illness had kept him in bed for a long time, in a long blur of ache and distress and fleeting anxious faces, and although he had been back on his feet for more than a week, he still grew tired very easily. It was frightening sometimes to catch himself breathless and exhausted, after something as ordinary as climbing a flight of stairs.

He sat relaxed, letting the soft sounds of the wind and the calling sheep drift through his mind. Then another sound came. Opening his eyes, he saw in the side mirror another car slowing to a stop behind them.

A man climbed out, thickset, chunky, wearing a flat cap, and a raincoat flapping over rubber boots; he was grinning. For no good reason, Will instantly disliked the grin. Rhys opened the back of the Land-Rover again, to reach for the jack, and Will heard the newcomer greet him in Welsh; the words were unintelligible, but they had an unmistakable jeering tone. All this short conversation, indeed, lay as open in meaning as if Will had understood every word.

The man was clearly mocking Rhys for having to change a wheel in the rain. Rhys answered, curtly but without crossness. The man looked deliberately into the car, walking forward to peer in at the window; he stared at Will, unsmiling, with strange small light-lashed eyes, and asked Rhys something. When Rhys answered, one of the words was 'Will.' The man in the raincoat said something else, with a sneer in it this time directed at both of them, and then without warning he broke into an astonishing tirade of rapid, bitter speech, the words pouring out flurried and guttural like a churning river in flood. Rhys appeared to pay no attention at all. At last the man paused, angry. He swung round and marched back to his car; then he drove slowly on past them, still staring at Will as he went by. A black-and-white dog was looking out over the man's shoulder, and Will saw that the car was in fact a van, grey and windowless at the back.

He slipped across into the driver's seat and pulled open the window; the Land-Rover lurched gently up into the air beneath him as Rhys heaved on the jack.

'Who was that?' Will said.

'Fellow called Caradog Prichard, from up the valley.' Rhys spat enigmatically on his hands, and heaved again. 'A farmer.'

'He could have stayed and helped you.'

'Ha!' Rhys said. 'Caradog Prichard is not well known for helping.'

'What did he say?'

'He let me know how amusing it was to see me stuck. And some things about a disagreement we have. Of no importance. And asked who you were.' Rhys spun his spanner, loosening the wheel-bolts, and glanced up with a shy conspiratorial grin. 'A good job our mothers were not listening, I was not polite. I said you were my cousin and none of his bloody business.'

'Was he cross?'

Rhys paused reflectively. 'He said - \iWe shall see about that\i.'

"Will looked up the valley road where the van had disappeared. "That's a funny thing to say.'

'Oh,' Rhys said, 'that is Caradog. His hobby is to make people feel uncomfortable. Nobody likes him, except his dogs, and he doesn't even like them.' He tugged at the injured wheel. 'Sit still up there now. We shan't be long.'

By the time he climbed back into the driving seat, rubbing his hands on an oily rag, the fine drizzle had turned to real rain; the dark hair was curling wet over his head. 'Well,' Rhys said. 'This is nice old weather to greet you, I must say. But it won't last. We shall have a good bit of sun yet, off and on, before the winter bites down on us.'

Will gazed out at the mountains, dark and distant, swinging into view as they drove along the road crossing the valley. Grey-white cloud hung ragged round the highest hills, their tops invisible behind the mist. He said, "The cloud's all tattered round the tops of the mountains. Perhaps it's breaking up.'

Rhys looked out casually. 'The breath of the Grey King? No, I'm sorry to tell you. Will, that's supposed to be a bad sign.'

Will sat very still, a great rushing sound in his ears; he gripped the edge of his seat until the metal bit at his fingers. 'What did you call it?'

'The cloud? Oh, when it hangs ragged like that we call it the breath of the \iBrenin Llwyd\i. The Grey King. He is supposed to live up there on the high land. It's just one of the old stories.' Rhys glanced sideways at him and then braked suddenly; the Land-Rover slowed almost to a halt. 'Will! Are you all right? White as a ghost, you look. Are you
feeling bad?'

'No. No. It was just -' Will was staring out at the grey mass of the hills. 'It was just ... the Grey King, the Grey King ... it's part of something I used to know, something I was supposed to remember, for always... I thought I'd lost it. Perhaps - perhaps it's going to come back...'

Rhys crashed the car back into gear. 'Oh,' he called cheerfully through the noise, 'we'll get you better, you just wait. Anything can happen in these old hills.'