"Patrick Tilley - Amtrak 6 - Earth - Thunder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)

the innocents.

From an overlooking crag, he and Roz had watched the distant fiery glow
wax and wane throughout the night then, in the grey dawn of the
following day, they had gone down to take stock of his inheritance.

But there was nothing left.

On the very same day he had become wordsmith to the Clan M'Call - the
greatest clan ever to spring from the bloodline of the She-Kargo - his
clanfolk had perished in a last blaze of glory and the hell-fires of
vengeance.

As the first shock faded and new breath forced its way into his lungs,
Cadillac stepped away from Roz, raised his face to the sky and howled
with grief. A heart-rending cry that came from deep within the soul.

Inarticulate, more animal than human, but which expressed his deep-felt
sense of loss and desolation in a way which mere words could not
encompass.

Falling to his knees, he pounded the bloodstained earth then furrowed
it with clawed fingers, scooping it up and smearing it over his neck,
arms and chest.

Roz knelt down beside him- this clear-skinned, smooth-boned Mute whose
future was now inextricably enmeshed with hers. They had met less than
24 hours ago, surrounded, as now, by the stench of death, but it had
only served to strengthen the instinctive bond between them.



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She watched patiently as Cadillac, oblivious to her presence, continued
to claw at the crimson earth and daub it on his body. To the detached
medical side of her mind, he seemed, by these frenzied gestures, to be
trying to share the dying agonies of his clanfolk. Gradually, the raw
edge of his guilt and anger became blunted. He slumped back on his
heels, round-shouldered under the burden of sorrow and lapsed into
total immobility, hands hanging limply between his thighs, his
expressionless eyes blind to all external sensation - the classic
symptoms of catatonia. For nearly an hour, not a muscle twitched.

Nothing moved except for the occasional tear which rolled down his
cheeks then, suddenly, he jerked into life and when he turned his
bloodied, dirt-streaked face towards her, the eyes were dry and
clear.