"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 3 - A Private Cosmos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

anybody.
Kickaha rode on the trail for several days because he wanted to find a trade-caravan and get news
of Talanac. He did not come across any and so left the trail because it was taking him away from
the direct route to Talanac. A hundred days after he had left the Hworakas village, he encountered
the trail again. Since it led straight to Talanac, he decided to stay on it.
An hour after dawn, the Half-Horses appeared.
Kickaha did not know what they were doing so close to the Tishquetmoac border. Perhaps they had
been making a raid, because, although they did not attack anybody on The Great TradePath, they did
attack Tishquetmoac outside it.
Whatever the reason for their presence, they did not have to give Kickaha an excuse. And they
would certainly do their best to catch him, since he was their greatest enemy.


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Kickaha urged his two horses into a gallop. The Half-Horses, a mile away to his left, broke into a
gallop the moment they saw him racing. They could run faster than a horse burdened with a man, but
he had agood lead on them. Kickaha knew that
B A PRIVATE COSMOS
an outpost was four miles ahead and that if he could get within its walls, he would be safe.
The first two miles he ran the stallion beneath him as swiftly as it would go. It gave its rider
everything it had; foam blew from its mouth and wet his chest. Kickaha felt bad about this, but he
certainly wasn't going to spare the animal if foundering it meant saving his own life. Besides,
the Half-Horses would kill the stallion for food.
At the end of the two miles, the Half-Horses were close enough for him to determine their tribe.
They were Shoyshatel, and their usual roving grounds were three hundred miles away, near the Trees
of Many Shadows. They looked like the centaurs of Earth myth, except that they were larger and
their faces and trappings certainly were not Grecian. Their heads were huge, twice as large as a
human being's, and the faces were dark, high-cheekboned, and broad, the faces of Plains Indians.
They wore feathered bonnets on their heads or bands with feathers; their hair was long and black
and plaited into one or two pigtails.
The upright human body of the centaur contained a large bellows-like organ to pump air into the
pneumatic system of the horse part. This swelled and shrank below the human breastbone and added
to their weird and sinister appearance.
Originally, the Half-Horses were the creations of Jadawin, Lord of this universe. He had fashioned
and grown the centaur bodies in his biolabs. The first centaurs had been provided with human
brains from Scythian and Sarmatian nomads of Earth and from some Achaean and Pelasgian tribesmen.
So it was that some Half-Horses still spoke these tongues, though most had
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long ago adopted the language of some Amerindian tribe of the Plains.
Now the Shoyshatel galloped hard after him, almost confident that they had their archenemy in
their power. Almost because experience had disillusioned many of the Plains people of the belief
that Kickaha could be easily caught. Or, if caught, kept.
The Shoyshatel, although they lusted to capture him alive so they could torture him, probably
intended to kill him as soon as possible. Trying to take him alive would require restraint and
delicacy on their part, and if they restrained themselves, they might find that he was gone.
Kickaha transferred to the other horse, a black mare with silver mane and tail, and urged it to
its top speed. The stallion dropped off, its chest white with foam, shaking and blowing, and then
fell when a Half-Horse speared it.