"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Dawn of Flame" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

10. OLD EINAR AGAIN

ONE. THE WORLD
Hull Tarvish looked backward but once, and that only as he reached the elbow of the road. The
sprawling little stone cottage that had been home was visible as he had seen it a thousand times, framed
under the cedars. His mother still watched him, and two of his younger brothers stood staring down the
Mountainside at him. He raised his hand in farewell, then dropped it as he realized that none of them saw
him now; his mother had turned indifferently to the door, and the two youngsters had spied a rabbit. He
faced about and strode away, down the slope out of Ozarky.

He passed the place where the great steel road of the Ancients had been, now only two rusty streaks and
a row of decayed logs. Beside it was the mossy heap of stones that had been an ancient structure in the
days before the Dark Centuries, when Ozarky had been a part of the old state of M'souri. The mountain
people still sought out the place for squared stones to use in building, but the tough metal of the steel road
itself was too stubborn for their use, and the rails had rusted quietly these three hundred years.

That much Hull Tarvish knew, for they were things still spoken of at night around the fireplace. They had
been mighty sorcerers, those Ancients; their steel roads went everywhere, and everywhere were the ruins
of their towns, built, it was said, by a magic that lifted weights. Down in the valley, he knew, men were
still seeking that magic; once a rider had stayed by night at the Tarvish home, a little man who said that in
the far south the secret had been found, but nobody ever heard any more of it.

So Hull whistled to himself, shifted the rag bag on his shoulder, set his bow more comfortably on his
mighty back, and trudged on. That was why he himself was seeking the valley; he wanted to see what the
world was like. He had been always a restless sort, not at all like the other six Tarvish sons, nor like the
three Tarvish daughters. They were true mountainies, the sons great hunters, and the daughters stolid and
industrious. Not Hull, however; he was neither lazy like his brothers nor stolid like his sisters, but restless,
curious, dreamy. So he whistled his way into the world, and was happy.

At evening he stopped at the Hobel cottage on the edge of the mountains. Away before him stretched the
plain, and in the darkening distance was visible the church spire of Norse. That was a village; Hull had
never seen a village, or no more of it than this same distant steeple, shaped like a straight white pine. But
he had heard all about Norse, because the mountainies occasionally went down there to buy powder and
ball for their rifles, those of them who had rifles.

Hull had only a bow. He didn't see the use of guns; powder and ball cost money, but an arrow did the
same work for nothing, and that without scaring all the game a mile away.

Morning he bade goodbye to the Hobels, who thought him, as they always had, a little crazy, and set off.
His powerful, brown bare legs flashed under his ragged trousers, his bare feet made a pleasant soosh in
the dust of the road, the June sun beat warm on his right cheek. He was happy; there never was a
pleasanter world than this, so he grinned and whistled, and spat carefully into the dust, remembering that
it was bad luck to spit toward the sun. He was bound for adventure.

Adventure came. Hull had come down to the plain now, where the trees were taller than the scrub of the
hill country, and where the occasional farms were broader, well tilled, more prosperous. The trail had
become a wagon road, and here it cut and angled between two lines of forest. And unexpectedly a
manтАФno, two menтАФrose from a log at the roadside and approached Hull. He watched them; one was
tall and light-haired as himself, but without his mighty frame, and the other was a head shorter, and dark.
Valley people, surely, for the dark one had a stubby pistol at his belt, wooden-stocked like those of the