"Brian Jacques - Redwall 02 - Mossflower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacques Brian)

across the snowbound country. Looking back, he could see his tracks
disappearing northward into the distance. Farther south the flatlands rolled
off endlessly, flanked to the west by the faint shape of distant hills, while
to the east stood the long ragged fringe marking the marches of Mossflower.
His nose twitched at the elusive smell of burning wood and turf from some
hearthfire. Cold wind soughed from the treetops, causing whorls of snow to
dance in icy spirals. The traveler gathered his ragged cloak tighter, adjusted
an old rusting sword that was slung across his back, and trudged steadily
forward, away from the wilderness, to where other creatures lived.
It was a forbidding place made mean by poverty. Here and

5

there he saw signs of habitation. The dwellings, ravaged and demolished, made
pitiful shapes under snow drifts. Rearing high against the forest, a curious
building dominated die ruined settlement. A fortress, crumbling, dark and
brooding, it was symbol of fear to the woodland creatures of Mossflower.

This was how Martin the Warrior first came to Kotir, place of the wildcats.

In a mean hovel on the south side of Kotir, the Stickle family crouched around
a low turf fire. It gusted fitfully as the night winds pierced the slatted
timbers where mud chinking had not been replaced. A timid scratch at the door
caused them to jump nervously. Ben Stickle picked up a billet of firewood,
motioning his wife Goody to keep their four little ones well back in the
shadows.

As the Goodwife Stickle covered her brood widi coarse burlap blankets, Ben
took a firmer grip on the wood and called out harshly in his gruffest voice,
"Be off with you and leave us alone. There's not enough food in here to go
around a decent hedgehog family. You've already taken half of all we have to
swell the larders in Kotir."

"Ben, Ben, 'tis oi, Urthclaw! Open up, burr. 'Tis freezen out yurr."

As Ben Stickle opened the door, a homely-faced mole trundled by him and
hurried across to the fire, where he stood rubbing his digging claws together
in front of the flames.

The little ones peeped out from the blankets. Ben and Goody turned anxious
faces toward their visitor.

Urthclaw rubbed warmth into his cold nose as he talked in the curious rustic
molespeech.

"Vurmin patrols be out, burr, weasels V stoats an* the loik. They'm a lukken
fer more vittles."

Goody shook her head as she wiped a little one's snout on her apron. "I knew
it! We should have run off and left this place, like the others. Where in the