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

before him and the best of companions to match his steps.
Lura licked at her wet fur and Fors caught a flash ofтАФwas it her thoughts or just
emotion? None of the Eyrie dwellers had ever been able to decide how the great cats
were able to communicate with the men they chose to honor with their company. Once
there had been dogs to run with manтАФFors had read of them. But the strange radiation
sickness had been fatal to the dogs of the Eyrie and their breed had died out forever.
Because of that same plague the cats had changed. Small domestic animals of
untamable independence had produced larger offspring with even quicker minds and
greater strength. Mating with wild felines from the tainted plains had established the new
mutation. The creature which now rubbed against Fors was the size of a mountain lion of
pre-Blow-up days, but her thick fur was of a deep shade of cream, darkening on head,
legs, and tail to a chocolate brownтАФafter the coloring set by a Siamese ancestor first
brought into the mountains by the wife of a research engineer. Her eyes were the deep
sapphire blue of a true gem, but her claws were cruelly sharp and she was a master
hunter.
That taste possessed her now as she drew Fors' attention to a patch of moist ground
where the slot of a deer was deep marked. The trail was freshтАФeven as he studied it a bit
of sand tumbled from the top into the hollow of the mark. Deer meat was good and he
had few supplies. It might be worth turning aside. He need not speak to LuraтАФshe knew
his decision and was off on the trail at once. He padded after her with the noiseless woods
walk he had learned so long before that he could not remember the lessons.
The trail led off at a right angle from the remains of the old road, across the tumbled
line of a wall where old bricks protruded at crazy points from heaped earth and brush.
Water from leaves and branches doused both hunters, gluing Fors' homespun leggings to
his legs and squeezing into his boots.
He was puzzled. By the signs, the deer had been fleeing for its life and yet whatever
menaced it had left no trace. But Fors was not afraid. He had never met any living thing,
man or animal, which could stand against the force of his steel-tipped arrows or which he
would have hesitated to face, short sword in hand.
Between the men of the mountains and the roving Plainsmen there was a truce. The
Star Men often lived for periods of time in the skin-walled tents of the herders,
exchanging knowledge of far places with those eternal wanderers. And his father had
taken a wife among the outlanders. Of course, there was war to the death between the
human kind and the Beast Things which skulked in the city ruins. But the latter had never
been known to venture far from their dank, evil-smelling burrows in the shattered
buildings, and certainly one need not fear meeting with them in this sort of open country!
So he followed the trail with a certain reckless disregard.
The trail ended suddenly on the lip of a small gully. Some ten feet or so below, a
streamтАФswollen by the rainтАФfrothed around green-grown rocks. Lura was on her belly,
pulling her body forward along the rim of the ravine. Fors dropped down and inched
behind a bush. He knew better than to interfere with her skillful approach.
When the tip of her brown tail quivered he watched for a trembling of Lura's flat
flanks which would signalize her spring. But instead the tail suddenly bristled and the
shoulders hunched as if to put a brake upon muscles already tensed. He caught her
message of bewilderment, of disgust and, yes, of fear.
He knew that he had better eyesight than almost all of the Eyrie men, that had been
proved many times. But what had stopped Lura in her tracks was gone. True, upstream a
bush still swayed as if something had just pushed past it. But the sound of the water
covered any noise and although he strainedтАФthere was nothing to see.
Lura's ears lay flat against her skull and her eyes were slits of blazing rage. But