"Bill Fawcett & Brian Thomsen - Masters of Fantasy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fawcett Bill)

be able to scour the coast for the missing." That last as a sop to the men from the destroyed village. They
surely knew it was an offer unlikely to bear fruit, but they looked hopeful anyway.
"Soonest begun's soonest done," one of the women said briskly. "We've only got two wagons for the
whole village. Let's get our traps moved before sunset!" Within moments, the women, young and old,
were heading purposefully towards their family longhouses, followed a little reluctantly by the men.
"Savvy!" Sted called after the girl who had confessed to knowing where most of the water-caves were.
She turned back abruptly.
"Sir?" she responded.
"Go to that longhouse over thereтАФ" Sted pointed at one where a bevy of women were already moving
bundles, barrels, and boxes out briskly to be piled beside the door. "When they're ready to take a load
out, guide them to the farthest cave you know ofтАФ"
"I'll take her up behind, pillion," Alain offered quickly. "That way we can come back for the next load
while the first is still unloading."
"Good. I want you to keep each longhouse's goods in a separate cave, that way when this is over there
won't be any quarrels over what belongs to who." Sted smiled encouragingly at her, and the girl returned
his smile shyly.
There was some objection to the choice of cave as the wagon-load set off: "We're ready first," grumbled

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 - Chapter 2

the oldest dame, "Don't see why we should be goin' the farthest."
"But milady, the farther away the cave is, the less likely it will be that it will be discovered," Alain
pointed out, thinking quickly. "You're getting the choice spot, not the worst one." The old woman gave
him a quick look, but nodded with reluctant satisfaction, and made no further complaints.
He would never have believed it, but the longhouses were stripped of every portable objectтАФand some
he wouldn't have considered portableтАФby twilight. The two village mules were ready to drop before it
was over, but they were made much of and given an extra ration. The village was substantially deserted
now, with only a handful of the very old and the very young remaining behind. In order to get
everything moved, the wagons had simply been unloaded at the flat spot nearest to each family's cave
before returning for another load. Now all of the able-bodied were lowering their goods down the cliff
walls to be stored; they would work all night, if necessary.
As darkness fell, Sted looked around the empty street down the middle of the village. "I'm going to go
somewhere quiet and contact Haven," he told Alain. "See what you can do to make yourself useful."
Sted and his Companion drifted off in the twilight. As gloom descended on the street, it occurred to
Alain that the most immediately useful thing he could do would be to light the village lamps, so that the
returning villagers would have lights beckoning them homeward. There were lamps outside the door of
each longhouse, lamps with fat wicks and large reservoirs of oil that by the smell could only come from
fish. He got a spill and ventured into the first of the longhouses.
He had never seen anything like it; there was a central hearth with a cone-shaped metal hood over it, and
a metal chimney reaching up to the roof. For the rest, it seemed to be one enormous room with
cupboards lining all four walls. There were no windows, only slits covered with something that wasn't
glass just under the eaves, like clerestory windows, but smaller.
It must be very dark in here during the day.
He knew why there weren't any windows, and why, as much as possible, the Evendim folk spent their
time out-of-doors. When winter storms closed in, the coast was hellish; storms swept in over the water
with fangs of ice and claws of snow. During the five Winter Moons it was hardly possible to set foot
outside these houses, and it would have been folly to give the wind that the fisherfolk called "the Ice-
Drake" any way to tear into the shelter of their homes.
But winter was moons away, and the present danger was not from nature but from man. Alain lit the