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

pulled her up. Ahead the ruins were closer together and grew larger. A townтАФmaybe
even a small city.
There was something about these ruins which made him uneasy. The farms which had
been recaptured by wild vegetation had none of this eerie strangeness about them. He
knew again the faint sickness, neither of body nor spirit, which had gripped him on the
road when he had traveled beside the wrecked convoy. Now he wiped one hand through
the mare's coarse mane as if he would like to rub away an unpleasant smear. And yet he
had touched nothing in this place. There was an evil miasma which arose mistlike even
through the steady drizzle of rain.
MistтАФthere was real mist, too! Ahead he saw coils of dirty white drifting in,
wreathing the tangled bulk of rotting wood and tumbled brick and stone. A fog was
gathering, thicker than the mountain ones he had known, thick and somehow frightening.
His fingers left the horse hair and flipped against his sore leg. The stab of pain which
followed made him cry out. This fog would put an end to travel for the day as far as he
was concerned. Now he needed a safe place to hole up in where he could light a fire and
prepare another treatment for his wound. And he wanted to be out of the rain for the
night.
He did not like the ruins, but now they might hold what he needed and it was wiser to
penetrate farther into them. But he held the mare to a slow walk and it was well that he
did. For soon a break in the pavement opened before themтАФa gaping black hole rimmed
with jagged teeth of broken concrete. They made a detour, edging as far from the
crumbling lip as the ruins would allow. Fors began to regret leaving the stone hut on the
farm. His constant pain he could no longer ignore. Perhaps it would have been better to
have rested for a day or two back there. But if he had done that he would not now be
riding the mare! He whistled softly and watched her ears point up in answer. No, it was
worth even the grinding in his flesh to have such a mount.
Twice more the pavement was broken by great holes, the last being so large that it
had the dimensions of a small crater. As Fors rode slowly around it he crossed a strip of
muddy, but hard-beaten earth which came up out of its shadowed maw. It had the
appearance of a well-worn and much-used path. Lura sniffed at it and snarled, her back
fur roughened, and she spat with a violent hissing sound. Whatever made that path she
counted an enemy.
Any creature which Lura, who would tackle a wild cow, a herd of roving swine, or a
stallion, so designated was not one which Fors cared to meet in his present crippled state.
He loosened rein and urged the mare to a brisker pace.
Some distance beyond the crater they came to a small hill on which stood a building
of white stone, and it still possessed a roof. The slope of the hill was clear of all save a
few low bushes and from the building Fors guessed one could have an almost
unhampered view of the surrounding territory. He decided quickly in its favor.
It was a disappointment to discover that the roof covered only a part and that the
center was open to the stormтАФbeing a small amphitheater in which rows of wide seats
went down to a square platform.
However, there were small rooms around the outer rim, under the roof, and in one of
these he made camp. He tied the mare to one of the pillars forming the aisle to the
amphitheater and contented her with grass pulled from the hill and some of his parched
corn which she relished. She could have been hobbled and left to graze but the memory
of that worn path by the crater kept him from doing that.
Rain had collected in broken squares of the pavement and Lura drank eagerly from
one such pool while the mare sucked noisily at another. From the drift of wind-driven
branches caught among the pillars Fors built a fire, placed behind a wall so that it could