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

"Yuree," I said, finding it hard to breath. "Do I dare think you'd want
me to ask?"

"Of course, silly," she said, with a teasing smile. "Not that I promise to
choose you."

"It will be honor enough to be allowed to ask," I said. "But the daughter
of the family head could not be pairmate to a haired one."

"Oh, pooh," she said. "We'll have Seer burn it off."

I wore the blisters for days, after I tried to burn away my curse myself.

And now I could feel the summer sun doing it's work on my partially
exposed scalp, the hair being by now about a finger long and tawny like
the hide of a lion. And was that a noise from below?

And so it was only Yuree with whom I could talk, share my shame, my
dreams. When she would sneak away from her hidehouse on a spring
night and lie in my arms and allow me to touch her lips with mine, to do
all those wonderful and blood-rousing things which prepeople are allowed,
her skirt or loincloth tucked securely between her legs to mark the only
off-bounds area, I dared to think of it, of her in my hidehouse, with me
bringing her the spoils of the hunt, for I was, truly, Eban, son of Egan the
Hunter.

"I will dress you in lion skins," I said.

"Oh, will you?" she breathed, her voice made low and funny by my
kisses on her bared torso. "Oh, will you?"

"For you I will gather a necklace of dragon guts," I promised.

Ha. I had not remembered that. Was that a sign? So long ago I had
promised her. Oh, gods of man, it was. It was a sign. I was the favored one.
She had remembered, and the multicolored thing hanging from her
father's hidehouse was the sign that it was, actually, unbelievably, Eban
who was the favorite.

At that moment I was ready to slay two dragons, three dragons, a dozen
dragons, to festoon my Yuree in gaudy and lovely guts. And at that
moment I heard a noise behind me and turned to see a tawny shape move
swiftly from cover to cover. So it was not only the possibility of a dragon
before me. There was the lion behind me, having tracked me, stalked me.

It was a tight situation. If I moved, the dragon's teeth would come
spitting to kill me. If I remained behind the rock, I would end up with four
manweights of lion on my back. Keeping in shelter, I strung my finest
arrow, tipped in dragonskin, to my bow, put my hardax atop the rock