"John Norman - Gor 04 - Nomads of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

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Book #4 "NOMADS OF GOR"
by John Norman

"Run" cried the woman. "Flee for your life"
I saw her eyes wild with fear for a moment above the
rep-cloth veil and she had sped past me.
She was peasant, barefoot, her garment little more than
coarse sacking. She had been carrying a wicker basket con-
taining vulos, domesticated pigeons raised for eggs and meat.
Her man, carrying a mattock, was not far behind. Over his
left shoulder hung a bulging sack filled with what must have
been the paraphernalia of his hut.
He circled me, widely. "Beware," he said, "I carry a Home
Stone."
I stood back and made no move to draw my weapon.
Though I was of the caste of warriors and he of peasants,
and I armed and he carrying naught but a crude tool, I
would not dispute his passage. One does not lightly dispute
the passage of one who carries his Home Stone.
Seeing that I meant him no harm, he paused and lifted an
arm, like a stick in a torn sleeve, and pointed backward.
'They're coming," he said. "Run, you fool Run for the gates
of Turia"
Turia the high-walled, the nine-gated, was the Gorean city
lying in the midst of the huge prairies claimed by the Wagon
Peoples.
Never had it fallen.
Awkwardly, carrying his sack, the peasant turned and
stumbled on, casting occasional terrified glances over his
shoulder
I watched him and his woman disappear over the brown
wintry grass.
In the distance, to one side and the other, I could see other
human beings, running, carrying burdens, driving animals
with sticks, fleeing.
Even past me there thundered a lumbering herd of star-
tled, short-bunked kailiauk, a stocky, awkward ruminant of
the plains, tawny, wild, heavy, their haunches marked in red
and brown bars, their wide heads bristling with a trident of
horns; they had not stood and formed their circle, she's and
young within the circle of tridents; they, too, had fled; farther
to one side I saw a pair of prairie sleen, smaller than the
forest sleen but quite as unpredictable and vicious, each
about seven feet in length, furred, six-legged, mammalian,
moving in their undulating gait with their viper's heads mov-
ing from side to side, continually testing the wind; beyond
them I saw one of the tumits, a large, flightless bird whose
hooked beak, as long as my forearm, attested only too clearly