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

approach of the red star was within a generation, completing
another two-hundred year cycle. Only once had it brought an
attacking army daring enough to challenge the iron-fisted Emperor
of two thousand years past. Two thousand years agoЧa defeat so
overwhelming it was alive, yet, in bitter Tumatsin tradition, in song,
and story. In a few years, Tengri-Nayon would be the brightest star
in the sky, and the cycle would be closed again. One more chance,
but no more, for Toregene was certain that in another two hundred
years there would be no Tumatsin left to greet their ancestors.

Toregene ducked instinctively as the door to the largest building
below her opened, spilling out light. Four men came out in full
battle-dress, carrying rifles, walking through the images of
countless troopers to replace the real men guarding the
encampment. Raucous laughter came from the open door, and
music. Toregene quickly revised her estimate of troopers to
sixteen, waited until the replaced guards had entered the building
and closed the door again before she crawled out of her spider-
trap. She pulled out her satchel and lowered the roof carefully,
smoothing over the seams with a light covering of needles before
slinking away from the edge of the cliff and onto the faint game trail
leading away from it. Her leather-clad feet made no sound. Tengri-
Khan would rise in a few hours, and it was a two hour walk to the
temporary ordu Temujin had set up to keep watch on the valley.

She walked easily in the darkness, for the sky was clear, and
starlight was sufficient for the eyes of a Tumatsin woman. But with
the blessing of such sight there was danger, for the great cats who
hunted the meadows and crags ahead could mistake her for one of
their own, and become territorially aggressive.



The trail rose gradually to a rock fall at the base of a granitic spire,
and along a narrow shelf to a skree field to the south. Toregene
stopped there briefly to retrieve the goat-leather bag of fluorescent
fungus from her satchel. The bag was half-filled from collecting
along the way to her observing post, but she'd passed up three
glowing clusters of the delicious seasoning under trees bordering
the meadows on the way back to the ordu. She would take full
advantage of her night travel.

She crossed the skree field, and the trail reappeared, heading
down into thick stands of White Bark and shining Tysk. Above the
tree tops loomed the sharp peaks of granite and schist extending
tens of kilometers to the great sea west, hundreds of kilometers
north and south. Shanji. The mountain world. Toregene navigated
the trail by feel in the inky darkness of the forest, alert to the
slightest sound. An owl passed over her, and she heard the
whisper of its gliding flight. The cry of a Shizi from afar announced