"Silistra - 02 - The Golden Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

УWill she live,, Hael? What think you?Ф came the voice from above and behind.
A face loomed close to mine; breath tickled my cheek. It was a bearded face,,
and that beard was curled and dressed and beaded and gray, with dust.
УWould you raise apprei here, and rest the night and day with her? If so, I
could be sure of it. Without shelter and attention, I cannot say.Ф
УI would not lose the time,Ф the deeper voice of he who held me came again.
УThen, Cahndor, I think her chances slim.Ф The bearded face receded from my
sight. A hand touched my face, my brow, raised the lids of my eyes. There was a
roaring in my ears, a great pulsing beat in my head. It seemed unimportant what
they said, what they did. Only sleep mattered to me, sleep and escape from my
body.
There was silence, then, and I felt the stride of he . who held me, he whom the
other had called Cahndor. I tried to open my eyes to see, but my lids were
weighty beyond my strength.
I smelled the threx before I saw it; the warm-damp musty smell that belongs to
the great four-legged omnivore who is the preferred riding beast of Silistra ..
I coaxed my lids open once more, as I was shifted from one pair of arms to
another. Before me I saw, in the fading light, the carved and tooled Parset
saddle,, with rolls of bright-colored web-cloth. strapped around it. The
short-coupled back upon which the saddle rested was sand and shadow, dark at the
withers, dappling light Сtoward the barrel. The threxТs broad chest, parallel to
my face where I was held well off the ground, gave me the impression of immense
size. Then my sight of it was obscured by a muscular, dusk-dark back, upon which
my fatherТs cloak, with the MiТysten ShaperТs seal, had been carelessly draped.
He who wore the cloak swung up in the saddle, and held out his arms from the
back of the dancing threx toward me. I was placed in those arms and lifted up
onto the threxТs back, laid across the saddle before the great beastТs rider, so
that the grip dug into my right hip, and my hair, flowing loose, almost dragged
the ground by the threxТs tripart hooves.
The blood rushed to my head, and the red-grained pulsing swallowed my sight.
I felt a callused hand upon the small of my back, large, rough. Then the threx
leaped into motion under me, the air was driven from my lungs, and I was glad of
the steadying hand. Sand and grit thrown up by its hooves filled my nose and
mouth and eyes, pelted my skin. The ground beneath my head rushed by under me,
blurred into a dark band. No longer could I see the cracked earth, the jumbled
rock, the coarse jeweled sand.
Endlessly did the threx plunge across the barren dead sea floor, endlessly did I
suffer the shower of clodded earth its hooves kicked up. When dark was full upon
us, when I thought I could not fight for one more breath, the Parset slid the
choppy-gaited beast to a halt so abruptly that in its rearнing one of those
rock-hard hooves grazed my temple.
He who wore the ShaperТs cloak vaulted from the threxТs back. His grip upon me
removed, I felt myself sliding. In mid-fall he caught me and laid me upon the
crusty, abrasive earth. I heard the blowing of the winded threx, the creak and
jingle of harness, the rustle of bodies about their busiнness in the dark. Then
the bladder was again at my lips. A horny hand brushed clod-caked hair from my
face. Water washed new strength into me. I choked and sputtered. The bladder was
withdrawn. A damp cloth caressed my mouth, my eyes, my temples. I winced when it
touched the cut I had sustained by the threxТs hoof. Then it too was withdrawn,
and I was once again alone. The night breeze had the chill of the abyss about,