"Ardath Mayhar - Hunters of the Plains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mayhar Ardath)

Those were gods so remote that even the shaman of the Badger Clan did not really believe that his rituals
and chants could propitiate them. The boy who was creeping through the grasses below the giant cloud
shapes felt, if he did not understand, that deep uncertainty.

Today was bright, however, the sun blazing down on the patches of sunflowers and the endless sea of tall
grass. Constant wind rippled the tops of the grasses and made the flowers bob erratically, masking any
movements of small animals along the ground.

That made it difficult for the boy to watch his prey at its digging. The badger he had targeted seemed to
be adding rooms to his burrow among sagebrush roots in the side of a small hummock. The busy
gray-and-white striped shape appeared and disappeared among swaying sunflower stalks as it pushed
dirt out of its excavations and turned back into the depths for more.

Do-na-ti slithered forward with the lithe certainty of a snake until he was in the last fringe of brush and
flower stalks. So softly had he approached that the badger, now returned to the outer air and busy with
something at the mouth of its burrow, was unaware of him.

Yet he knew that as soon as he rose to throw his short spear the animal would be alert instantly. That
was why his final sequence of movements was incredibly swift and smooth. With one motion, he was on
his feet, his arm cocked, the weapon sent surely on its way to the target.

The badger gave a gruff shriek as the keen chert point buried itself in its muscular back and penetrated
lungs and heart. With desperate flops, it reacted reflexively, and at last, thrashing and kicking, the
creature died.

Do-na-ti waited until the last reflex movements stopped and a trickle of blood dribbled from the badger's
nose and mouth. Approaching a badger that was not quite dead was a perilous matter, which had been
known to cause terrible injury to hunters who lifted prey that was still living and were clawed and bitten
by their quarry.

The boy stepped forward at last. He looked up at the sky, down at the dead animal, and sang the ritual
of thanks for this kill. He marked his forehead with the creature's blood, and then he gutted the dead
badger. Having tied the carcass foot-to-foot, he slung its looped body around the shaft of his spear and
turned his face toward the village.

He was filled with triumph, for at last he had a badger skin for the hood of the costume in which he would
celebrate his man-rite. Each clan considered a boy a child until he had faced his own clan beast and
made his ceremonial headgear.

Tomorrow he would be honored by his Badger-Clan family with a chant, and E-lo-ni's family, who were
Terrapin-Clan, would come. Not until he became a man would her mother consent to their marriage,
though her father, a childhood companion of his own father, quietly approved. Yet disposition of a
daughter was the mother's and the grandmother's right, and now they would be pleased, Do-na-ti
thought, to give their consent.

For all the seasons of their lives the two of them had been friends and companions. Only when E-lo-ni
became a woman, a part of the vital women's element of the clan, did they separate, he to learn the
demanding techniques of weapon-making, stalking, and hunting, she to learn the multiple skills that
clothed, fed, and healed the People.