"S. M. Stirling - Shikari in Galveston" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

ambush and stealth. Kill them! Take their lands! Hunt them down!"
"Kill! Kill all Tall Ones! Kill and eat!" A vicious eagerness was in the words, and an ancient hate.
"And on that good day, I shall return to bring you His blessing! Now we shall make sacrifice, and
feast."
He reached down and flicked off the gag, and the sacrifice gave the first of the cries prescribed in the
rite, as he swept the blade of the khindjal from throat to pubis in an initial, very shallow cut. The man
sighed with pleasure and swept his arms open and up, invoking the Peacock Angel.
"Eat!" the swamp-men screamed. "Eat!"
Technically, they should be chanting the Black God's name at this point in the ritual. But it was all the
same, in the end. For would not Tchernobog eat all the world, in time? He cut again, again . . .
"Eat! Eat!"


I: The Bear in His Strength

RobreтАФRobre sunna Jowan, gift-named the Hunter, of the Bear Creek clan of the Cross Plains
tribeтАФgrunted as he strode southward past the peeled wands that marked the boundaries of the
Dan-nulsford Fair. There were eleven new heads set on tall stakes in the scrubby pasture.outside the
stockade, fresh enough with the fall chill that the features could still be seen under the flies. One was of
his own people, to judge from the yellow beard and long flaxen hair; that color wasn't common even
among the Seven Tribes and rare as hen's teeth among outlanders. He thought he recognized Smeyth
One-Eye, an outcast from the Panthers who lived a little north and west of here.
Finally caught him lifting the wrong man's horses, he supposed with idle curiosity. One-Eye had
needed shortening for some time, being a bully and a lazy, thieving one at that. Or maybe it was lifting the
wrong womans skirts.
The other heads were in a clump away from One-Eye's perch, and their features made him look more
closely, past the raven damageтАФthey weren't as fresh as the outlaw's. They were darker of skin than his
folk, wiry-haired, massively scarred in zigzag ritual patterns that made them even more hideous in death
than they had been in life, several with human finger-bones through the septums of their noses. The lips
drawn back in the final rictus showed rotting teeth filed to points.
Man-eaters, Robre thought, and spat.
He waved greeting to the guards at the gateтАФAlligator clansmen, since Dannulsford was the seat of
their Jefe. The Bear Creek families had no feud with the Alligators just at the moment, but he would have
been safe within the wands in any case. A Fair was peace-holy; even outright foreigners could come
here unmolested along the river or trade roads, when no great war was being waged.
Two of the Alligator warriors stood and leaned on their weapons, a spear and a Mehk musket, wearing
hide helmets made from the head-skins of their totem and keeping an eye on the thronging
traffic. They wouldn't interfere unless fights broke out or someone blocked the muddy path, in which case
they could call for backup from half a dozen others who crouched and threw dice on a deerhide. Those
warriors kept their weapons close to hand, of course, and one had an Imperial breech-loading rifle that the
Bear Creek man eyed with raw but well-concealed envy. The Alliga-' tors were rich from trade
with the coastlands, and inclined to be toplofty.
One of the gamblers looked up and smiled,, gap-toothed. "Heya, Hunter Robre," he said in greeting.

"Heya, Jefe's-man Tomul," Robre said politely in return, stopping to chat. "A raid?" He jerked his
thumb at the stakes with the ten heads. "Wild-men?"
The hunter stood aside from a string of pack mules that was followed by an oxcart heaped with
pumpkins; axles squealed like dying pigs, and the shock-headed youth riding the vehicle popped his
whip. The three horses that carried Robre's pelts were well trained and followed him, bending their heads
to crop at weeds when their master stopped.