"Andre Norton - Darkness and Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

bits of rusted metal. Here and there he saw one of the alternative-powered vehicles,
seeming almost intact. But they were dead too. All of it was dead, in a horrible way. He
experienced a vague feeling of contamination from just walking beside the wreckage.
There were guns on the moving forts, guns which still swung ready, and there had
been men, hundreds of men. He could see their white bones mixed with the rust and the
debris driven in by years of wind and storm. Guns and menтАФwhere had they been going
when the end came? And what was the end? There were none of the craters he had been
told were to be found where bombs had fallenтАФjust smashed machines and men, as if
death had come as a mist or a wind.
Guns and men on the marchтАФmaybe to repel invaders. The book of air-borne
messages treasured in the Eyrie had spoken once or twice of invaders coming from the
skyтАФenemies who had struck with paralyzing swiftness. But something must have
happened in turn to that enemyтАФor else why had the invaders not made the land their
own? Probably the answer to that question would never be known.
Fors reached the end of the blasted column. But he kept on walking along the clean
earth until he topped a rise and could no longer sight the end of a wasted war. Then he
dared once more to walk the road of the Old Ones.

3
The Dark Hunter
About half a mile farther on the shadow of a woodland swallowed up the road. Fors'
heart lifted when he saw it. These open fields were strange to a mountain-born man but
he felt at home in a thick coat of trees such as the one before him now.
He was trying to remember the points on the big map which hung on the wall of the
Star House, the map to which was added a tiny mark at the return of each roving
explorer. This northern route crossed the wedge end of a portion of territory held loosely
by Plainsmen. And the Plainsmen had horsesтАФuseless in the mountains and so untamed
by his peopleтАФbut very needful in this country of straight distances. To have a horse at
his service nowтАФ
The cool of the woods lapped him in and he was at home at once, as was Lura. They
padded on, their feet making but the faintest whisper of sound. It was a scent carried by a
tiny puff of breeze which brought them upтАФWood smoke!
Fors' thought met Lura's and agreed. She stood for a long moment, testing the air with
her keener nostrils, and then she turned aside, pushing between two birches. Fors scraped
after her. The guiding puff of wind was gone, but he could smell something else. They
were approaching a body of waterтАФnot running water or the sound of its passing would
be heard.
There was a break in the foliage ahead. He saw Lura flatten herself out on a rock
surface which was almost the same color as her own creamy hide, flatten and creep. And
he hunkered down to follow her example, the gritty stone biting knees and hands as he
wormed out beside her.
They were belly down on a spur of rock which overhung the surface of a woodshemmed
lake. Not far beyond a thread of stream trickled away and he could spot two
islands, the nearest joined to the mainland by a series of stepping stones. On the shores of
this islet crouched someone very busy over a cooking fire.
The stranger was no mountaineer, that was certain. In the first place his wideshouldered,
muscular bronze body was bare to the waist and at least three shades darker
in skin tint than the most deeply tanned of the Eyrie men. The hair on his round skull was
black and tightly curled. He had strongly marked features with a wide-lipped mouth and
flat cheekbones, his large dark eyes set far apart. His only clothing was a sort of