"David Drake - Old Nathan (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

"Mine!" snorted Spanish King, and he strode toward his rival with a deliberation that seemed gentle until
the two of them again crashed head to head.

Both bulls had learned caution and a respect for the present rival as for no other in their experience.
They locked horns, and all obvious motion stopped.

Old Nathan found the stump of a beech forty inches in diameter, a survivor of the valley's first clearing,
and settled himself on it regardless of the layer of soot from brush burned nearby. He was not a
participant in this battle, though he had made it possible. The aurochs would not have had sufficient
material form in this worldтАФand Spanish King would not have had form in the valley the aurochs trod in
lifeтАФsave for the rent between their existences which the cunning man had opened with his scrying glass.

Even without Old Nathan's intervention, animals would have known of the presence of the great piebald
bull. Smaller ones, like Boardman's bitch and the rabbits who would come to crop flowers springing from
the newground, would skulk and remain beneath noticeтАФeven as their kin had done during the aurochs'
proper life. Perhaps even deer would browse in the waste which would become meadow and then forest
again, as it had done in the past.

But no animal large enough to drag a plow through roots and half-burnt saplings could coexist with the
aurochs' fury. Horses and oxen would panic at the challenge and the glowering phantom of the piebald
bull, even if it were no more than a memory in the soil itself. . . .

The aurochs was no phantasm now. He and Spanish King both pawed forward without moving, as if
they were trying to pull stoneboats too heavy for even their huge muscles. Clay heaped behind each of
the bulls' forehooves as the thrust which could not drive the beasts forward began to force the ground
back.

King's tail lashed in a circular motion, rising to the top slowly and then cutting through the remainder of
the arc with a snap like that of the whip which had cut him the day before. The aurochs' brushier tail was
almost still, but his ears popped repeatedly against the base of his horns as if to add even their weight to
the force mustered against Spanish King.

The bulls' first contact had been like the lightning, a cataract of sudden power that would slay or fail but
could not last. This second struggle mimicked the thunder in its rumbling omnipresence, shaking the world
without changing it; but not even thunder rolls forever.

The rivals sprang apart as if by concert, each of them pivoting their hindquarters left and keeping their
heads low to face a renewed attack by the other. When they had backed till twenty yards separated
them, each began to sidle toward the creek. The blood which would otherwise have matted the fur of the
aurochs' right shoulder had been washed away by sweat.
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




Old Nathan got up and followed his bull to the nearby stream. He kept a wary eye on the aurochs,
splay-legged and already slurping water. Though the cunning man knew that he could neither affect nor
be affected by the phantom, the piebald bull had a savage reality which penetrated to grosser planes of
existence. Big Bone Valley would not become plowland so long as the aurochs' ghost walked it.