"Kim Newman - Great Western" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

were sucked under if they set a hoof wrong.
Something moved near the edge of the clearing.
Allie had her catapult primed, her eye fixed on the rabbit. Crouching, still as a statue, she
concentrated. Jack Coney nib-bled on nothing, unconcerned. She pinched the nailhead, imagining a point
between the ears where she would strike.
A noise sounded out on the moor road. The rabbit van-ished, startled by the unfamiliar rasp of an
engine.
'"S'blood," she swore.
She stood up, easing off on her catapult. She looked out towards Achelzoy. A fast-moving shape
was coming across the moor.
The rabbit was lost. Maskell's men would soon be about, making the woods dangerous. She
chanced a maintained path and ran swiftly downhill. At the edge of Maskell's property, she came to a
stile and vaulted itтАФwrenching her shoulder, but no matterтАФlanding like a cat on safe territory. Without
a look back at the "TRESPASSERS WILL BE VENTILATED" sign, she traipsed between two rows of
trees, toward the road.
The path came out half a mile beyond the village, at a sharp kink in the moor road. She squatted
with her back to a signpost, running fingers through her hair to rid herself of tan-gles and snaps of thorn.
The engine noise was nearer and louder. She considered putting a nail in the nuisance-maker's petrol
tank to pay him back for the rabbit. That was silly. Whoever it was didn't know what he'd done.
She saw the stranger was straddling a Norton. He had slowed to cope with the winds of the moor
road. Every month, someone piled up in one of the ditches because he took a bend too fast.
To Allie's surprise, the motorcyclist stopped by her. He shifted goggles up to the brim of his hat. He
looked as if he had an extra set of eyes in his forehead.
There were care-lines about his eyes and mouth. She judged him a little older than Susan. His hair
needed cutting. He wore leather trews, a padded waistcoat over a dusty khaki shirt, and gauntlets. A
brace of pistols was bolstered at his hips, and he had a rifle slung on the Norton, within easy reach.
He reached into his waistcoat for a pouch and fixings.
Pulling the drawstring with his teeth, he tapped tobacco onto a paper and rolled himself a cigarette
one-handed. It was a clever trick, and he knew it. He stuck the fag in his grin and fished for a box of
Bryant and May.
"Alder," he said, reading from the signpost. "Is that a vil-lage?"
"Might be."
"Might it?"
He struck a light on his thumbnail and drew a lungful of smoke, held in for a moment like a hippie
sucking a joint, and let it funnel out through his nostrils in dragon-plumes.
"Might it indeed?"
He didn't speak like a yokel. He sounded like a wireless announcer, maybe even more clipped and
starched.
"If, hypothetically, Alder were a village, would there be a hostelry there where one might buy
breakfast?"
"Valiant Soldier don't open till lunchtime."
The Valiant Soldier was Alder's pub, and another of Squire Maskell's businesses.
"Pity."
"How much you'm pay for breakfast?" she asked.
"That would depend on the breakfast."
"Ten bob?"
The stranger shrugged.
"Susan'll breakfast you for ten bob."
"Your mother."
 "No."