"Zach Hughes - Killbird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

the test of manhood, killing one of the huge and dangerous animals. Two
bearskins awaited me, awaited to decorate and make warm the floor of my
hidehouse for my pairmate. A tawny lion stalked me, making the stubble
of hair which was growing on my neck crawl with warning, but my shouts
scared the animal away. I made note of him, for not since my father's
father had a member of the family killed a lion. Killing a lion was on the
same order of bravery as collecting a necklace of dragon's guts and almost
as dangerous, for my father's father told tales of a lion killing two men
while bearing five arrows in his body, one so near his heart that blood
pumped out as he moved.

I first sensed danger when I came down a long, sloping hillside, moving
cautiously through the trees, which were decreasing in size. I felt it begin
to tingle in my chest, and then I bared my belly and wiped away the sweat
and I could feel it better, a little warning tingle which made my heart
pound. I moved back and came down another way, a mile distant from my
first approach to the valley's bottom, and the tingle was so faint I went
forward. There, where the tingle originated, I saw a heap of rubble, the
stones and strangeness which gave home to the spirits which warned with
a tingle in the chest and belly, and I felt very much alone.

There was a stream and then a hill. Beyond the hill, I thought, I could
see the deadly flats, and that would be the limit of my travel, for no man
goes down into the flats and returns. I climbed the hill, picking my steps
with the unconscious silence of the hunter, careful of loose stones. I peeked
over the top of the hill and saw a valley stretching before me. I felt no
danger. I stood and started walking down the hill and almost stumbled
over the bleached white bones of a deer. A jangle of alarm was in my head,
and I fell to the ground, rolling quickly to shelter behind a large rock.
Cautiously I looked out, and not a dozen steps away there was another pile
of bleached bones.

"When you see the white bones of deathтАж"

My blood pumped. My face burned. Inch by inch, rock by rock, I eased
my way down the hillside. There could be no mistake. The white bones of
death were everywhere, some of them old, some so old they were nothing
more than white ash. There were no freshly killed animals. Either the
dragon had depopulated the area of wildlife or the survivors had learned,
through experience, not to walk on that deadly hillside.

Knowing that I had never faced such danger, not even when I stood
alone with only my longbow against the giant black bear, I rested, feeling
the sun warm my back, willing my heart to stop its wild poundings. My
mind did things of its own. I yearned for a running mate, a friend, such as
Logan's Teetom, even a Teetom, who in my hour of loneliness could say,
"You can do it, Eban. You can do it."
 Oh, gods of man, I had been alone so long, so long. When my father
failed to return from the hunt and there came a report that he had last
been seen heading toward the far hills where there were dragons, I was