"Jay Lake - The Leopard's Paw" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

The LeopardтАЩs Paw by Jay Lake
Standing against a deafening roar, Jacob Ervin slammed his fists, hardened weapons as powerful as any
product of the metalsmithтАЩs art, into the head of the leaping cat. Fangs longer than his index finger
brushed so close to his face that he could smell the rotten meat on the creatureтАЩs breath. But his
shattering blow had done its work. The head was already stove in.
He moved quickly, unsheathing his ancient poniard. The weapon kept a marvelous edge that belied the
brutish neglect of its late owner. Ervin worked the point in under the sabretooth leopardтАЩs front right
shoulder and gutted the beast in one great swoop. Long practice in the woods of Colorado stood him
good stead under the alien sun as he skinned the cat.

The meat he abandoned for the carrion eaters already circling close. Let the hyenas and the vultures have
it. Ervin had taken his trophy in single combat, a fair fight of muscle against muscle, backed by a superbly
trained human intellect set against highly evolved predatory instinct. He could afford to be generous to
those who would someday clean his own bones.

Carrying the bloody hide, he smiled into the glare of the setting sun. It would be a long run to his current
camp, but the moon was rising and the smell of the cat upon him would ward off all but the most
foolhardy animals.

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He spent the next few days scraping and curing the hide. Ervin had picked this particular cave for his
campsite because of the saline deposits nearby. He was not sure which of the local plants would be a
good source of tannin, so heтАЩd fallen back on the old frontier method of salt-curing. The thing stunk
enough to bother even his prodigiously indifferent nose, but Ervin stayed the course.

This sabretooth leopard was key to his plan to enter the lost city of Redwater.

The Borgan tribal king had broken his word to Ervin. Betrayed by a savage! No American man could
stand for such treatment, not if he wanted to look himself in the mirror again. Not that Ervin had seen a
mirror since coming to this world, but the principle was the same.

The mountain-walls to the north were a boundary to everyone save those black buzzard-men who raided
all the local tribes. He had yet to find a way across the rocky barrier, but he would. In the mean time,
Ervin needed to settle his position among the savages once and for all. He had no ambition to be their
king, but neither would he be subject to their whims and foolish taboos.

The leopard was coming along nicely. HeтАЩd boiled the skull, for the sake of being too hurried to bury it.
Ervin had never chanced to study the taxidermistтАЩs art, but he had some notion of what he was about.
HeтАЩd already set aside a pair of opals stolen from the Borgans to use for the leopardтАЩs eyes. Shame that
he had no flashlight or other way of making them glow from within. Now that the skin was drying under
its load of salt, Ervin worked on the wicker frame that would make it stand out from his body. This
would transform him into a great cat padding through the night.

Redwater was where the last temple of the leopard priests had stood, before the savages had rebelled
and thrown them down amid fire and but blood. The curses laid upon that benighted place were
legendary. But curses meant nothing to a man as hard-driven and unforgiving of self as Ervin was.

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