"Tilley, Patrick - The Amtrack Wars 06 - Earth-Thunder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)

flown by a Mute. The same thing had happened when they had overflown
the settlement and seen the groups of camouflaged Trail-Blazers moving
through it sowing a trail of death and destruction. Some had even
paused long enough to lower their weapons and raise their dark, visored
faces as Cadillac circled overhead.

His first impulse had been to dive down and spray them with a prolonged
burst from the mini-Vulk in the nose of the Skyhawk, but he did not
dare risk damaging his precious cargo: Roz - the young stranger whom Mr
Snow had given into his care. Gritting his teeth, Cadillac had made
two low passes, dipping his wings to salute the murderers of his
clanfolk.

The Trail-Blazers had waved to him. And then, as he flew off - wracked
with guilt - to find a landing place higher up in the hills, those same
hands had dropped back onto their weapons to continue the slaughter of
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.

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