"Chad Oliver - Blood's a Rover" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oliver Chad)

The dancing had stopped. The natives waited, nervous, suddenly uncertain. The yellow moon
watched through the trees. As though someone had flipped a switch, sound disappeared. There was
silence. The great ricefruit was magic. They looked at the two men as though, seeing them for the first
time. This was not the way of the past, not the way of the ancestors. This was something completely new
and they found themselves lost, without precedent for action. Ren alone smiled at them, and even he had
fear in his eyes.
Conan Lang waited tensely. He must make no move; this was the crisis point. Andy stood at his side,
very still, hardly breathing.
A native walked solemnly into the silence, carrying a young pig under his arm. Conan Lang watched
him narrowly. The man was obviously a shaman, a witch doctor, and his trembling body and too-bright
eyes were all too clear an indication of why he had been chosen for his role in the society.
With a swiftness of motion that was numbing, the shaman slit the pigтАЩs throat with a stone knife. At
once he cut the body open. The blood stained his body with crimson. His long, thin hands poked into the
entrails. He looked up, his eyes wild.
тАЬThey are not ancestors,тАЭ he screamed, his voice high like an hysterical womanтАЩs. тАЬThey have come
to do us evil!тАЭ
The very air was taut with tension.
 тАЬNo,тАЭ Conan Lang said loudly, keeping his voice clear and confident. тАЬThe barath-tui, the shaman,
has been bewitched by sorcerers! Take care that you do not offend your ancestors!тАЭ
Conan Lang stood very still, fighting to keep the alarm off his face. He and Andy were helpless here,
and he knew it. They were without weapons of any sortтАФthe native loin cloth being a poor place to
conceal firearms. There was nothing they could doтАФthey had miscalculated, moved too swiftly, and now
they were paying the price.
тАЬWe are your brothers,тАЭ he said into the ominous silence. тАЬWe are your fathers and your fatherтАЩs
fathers. There are others who watch.тАЭ
The flames leaped and danced in the stillness. An old man stepped forward. It was the chief that
Conan had noticed watching him before.
тАЬYou say you are our brothers who have taken the long journey,тАЭ the old chief said. тАЬThat is good.
We would see you walk through the fire.тАЭ
The wind sighed in the trees. Without a momentтАЩs hesitation, Conan Lang turned and walked swiftly
toward the flames that crackled and hissed in the great stone fire pits.




There was nothing else in all the world except the flickering tongues of orange flame that licked nearer
and nearer to his face. He saw the red, pulsing coals waiting beneath the twisted black branches in the
fire and he closed his eyes. The heat singed his eyebrows and he could feel his hair shrivel and start to
burn.
Conan Lang kept moving, and moved fast. He twisted a rigid clamp on his mind and refused to feel
pain.
He wrenched his mind out of his body, thinking as he had been trained to think, until it was as if his
mind floated a thing apart, free in the air, looking down upon the body of Conan Lang walking through
hell.
He knew that one of the attributes of the Oripesh ancestor gods was that they could walk through
flame without injuryтАФa fairly common myth pattern. He had known it before he left Earth. He should
have been prepared, he knew that. But man was not perfect, which would have been a dangerous flaw
had it not been his most valuable characteristic.
He saw that his legs were black and blistered and he smelled the suffocating smell of-burning flesh.
The smoke was in his head, in his lungs, everywhere, choking him. Some of the pain was coming