"Glass,.James.C.-.Shanji" - читать интересную книгу автора (Glass James C)

The festival location was far beyond the mountains, and her mother
had been cooking for two days, their ger filled with wonderful odors
of mutton, cheese and ayrog. Other women of the ordu came and
went, carrying bags of tea, and barley ground to a fine flour. Goats
and sheep had been brought in from the high valleys, their bleating
a constant din from the holding pen near the ger. They dined well
on grainy gruel to fatten them after another long, hard winter, but
Kati often wondered if they sensed their fate.

Today she was confined to a pile of hides to play with her little
brother while the women worked, their faces glistening over a
wood-fired stove, talk animated with laughter. Kati sensed
excitement, a pleasure projected in amber eyes normally deep
brown during the drudgery of ordinary days. There were quiet
whispers, and sudden giggles as the women shared a secret story.
She didn't mind being ignored, at least for the moment, for it was
fun to play horses with Baber. They were separated in age by little
more than a year, and Da had made four horses for each of them,
stuffed with wool and painted by hand with the colorful trappings of
their ancestors. Warrior dolls clung to the flanks of the horses,
faceless heads with black pigtails, images of bow and arrow
quivers painted on their backs. Baber growled, thrusting forward
two horses as they sat crossed-legged, knees touching. "Kati die,"
he snarled.

Kati met his charge with a single warrior on a black stallion.
"Shanji!" she cried, twisting her horse to bite at the attackers, and
all three riders toppled from their mounts at once.

"I win," she said. "Two to one."

Baber scowled. "You push too hard. You're bigger."

"I am an old, experienced warrior," said Kati. The women at the
stove turned and smiled at her. One of them said, "Toregene, your
little warrior-empress already does battle with the men. Surely
she's old enough to begin riding. When will Temujin commence
her lessons?"

Kati's mother shushed the woman, a finger on her lips. "Listen,"
she said, and the women bent close in whispers. Kati strained to
hear them, and then the women giggled, snuck a look at her,
amber eyes twinkling.

Kati wondered about their sudden pleasure from a secret
whispered by Ma, but now Baber was charging again, this time with
three horses, and she braced her remounted warrior for the attack.