"Eternal Champion - 05 - The Skrayling Tree" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

one repeated sound. "Werner" was it? A name? The youth looked as if he had
stepped from the European Dark Ages. His unstirring white hair fell in long
braids. He wore a simple deerskin jacket, and his face was smeared with what
might have been white clay. His eyes were desperate.
The wind yelped and danced around us, bending the trees, turning the ferns into
angry goblins. Ulric instinctively put his arm around me, and we began to back
towards the shore. His hand felt cold. He was genuinely frightened.
The wind appeared to be pursuing us. Everywhere the foliage bent and twisted,
this way and that. It was as if we were somehow in the middle of a tornado.
Branches opened and closed; leaves were torn into ragged clouds. But our
attention remained on the face at the window.
"What is it?" I asked. "Do you recognize the boy?"
"I don't know." He spoke oddly, distantly. "I don't know. I thought my brother-
but he's too young, and besides ..."
All his brothers had died in the First War. Like me, he had noticed a strong
family resemblance. I felt him shake. Then he took charge of his emotions.
Although he had extraordinary self-control, he was terrified of something,
perhaps even of himself. A cloud passed across the sinking sun.
"What is he saying, Ulric?"
" Foorna'? I don't know the word." He gasped out a few more sentences, a
nonsensical rationale about the fading light playing tricks, and pulled me
rather roughly into the bracken and back through the woods until we arrived at
the shore where we had drawn up our canoe. The wild wind was bringing in clouds
from all directions, funneling towards us in a black mass. I felt a spot of rain
on my face. The wind whipped the turning tide already beginning to cover the
tiny beach. We were lucky to have returned
early. Ulric almost hurled me into the canoe as we pushed off and took up our
paddles, forcing the canoe into the darkness. But Auld Strom had grown stronger
and kept forcing us back towards the shore. The wind seemed sentient,
deliberately making our work harder, seeming to blow first from one side then
another. It was unnatural. Instinctively, I hated it.
What irresponsible idiots we had been! I could think of nothing but my children.
The salt water splashed cold on my skin. My paddle struck weed, and there was a
sudden stink. I looked over my shoulder. The woods seemed unaffected by the wind
but were full of ghostly movement, shadows elongated by the setting sun and hazy
air pursuing us like giants advancing through the trees. Were they hunting the
young man who was even now running down the long slab of rock and into the
water, his braided milky hair bouncing on his shoulders as he tried to reach us?
With a grunt and a heavy splash Ulric gouged his paddle into the water and broke
the defenses of that erratic tide. The canoe moved forward at last. The wind
lashed our faces and bodies like a cowman's whip, goading us back, but we
persevered. Soaked by the spray we gained some distance. Yet still the youth
waded towards us, his eyes fixed on Ulric, his hands grasping, as if he feared
the pursuing shadows and sought our help. The waves grew wilder by the moment.
"Father!" The birdlike cry blended with the shrieking wind until both resonated
to the same note.
"No!" Ulric cried almost in agony as we at last broke the current's grip on us
and found deeper water. There was a high sound now, keening around us, and I
didn't know if it was the wind, the sea or human pursuers.
I wished I knew what the youth wanted, but Ulric's only thought was to get us to