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

She looked at me and smiled, her beautiful skull gleaming with a
morning application of oil to protect it from the sun. But her smile,
although I felt it was for me alone, was also spread around to encompass
Logan, Teetom his running friend, Young Pallas and the others.

"Is that all, then?" Strabas asked, looking down the slope toward the
hidehouses of the family, where morning cookfires were beginning to
smoke.

"Is not every eligible preman in the family enough for you?" Strabo
asked, patting his pairmate on her well-shaped haunch. "And so, Eban,
son of Egan the Hunter, what do you speak?"

"I speak the sweet of the stingers," I said, placing the two buckets of the
delicious and sticky stuff at Yuree's feet. "The hides of the swimmers to be
soft on Yuree's skin, the hides of the bears, one killed by my father, one by
myself. I speak playthings to please, the chewed skin of the deer for
nighttime comfort in the cold of the winters. My hardax, the ax of Eban
the Hunter, will provide. My hidehouse is new, of the finest skins, and
behind it, in the sun, the provisions for winter are drying already."

"Well spoken," Strabo said.
 "He speaks not of his hair," Strabas muttered, looking at my skull and
my face, where the stubble of my hair made a darkness.

"And Logan, son of Logman, what speak you?" Strabo asked.

Logan's buythings were more numerous, but contained nothing as
important as a bearskin. The others were comparable. I was beginning to
be sorry I had gone first before it was over, for there was nothing to do but
stand and listen as the premen of the family made their offers and their
promises. When at last it was over and all had spoken, there was a silence.
The females of the family, leaving their cookfires, had begun to gather. I
felt as I usually felt when the family gathered, as if all eyes were on me, on
my prickly skull, my darkened face, my limbs which were not as
strong-looking and beautiful as those of the other premen. My body, too,
was somewhat of a curse, although, since I was merely a preman, there
was hope. But where Logan, for example, was squat and thick, his arms
short and powerful, his legs shorter from the knees down than from the
knees up, I was thin, almost as thin as the starving weaklings of the low
slopes, and my arms were long, my legs long and slim. It was not that I
was not strong. The games proved, to the surprise of all, that my slim
arms with their bunched muscles at the bicep were strong, that my long
legs, making me a full hand taller than any of my contemporaries, were
powerful and, surprisingly, seemingly tireless. It was my legs which were
the secret of my success as a hunter, for I could cover half again as much
ground in a stride as, say, Logan with his short and beautiful limbs.

But it was time for the selection. Strabo pulled himself erect. "Well