"Alan Dean Foster - Icerigger 3 - Deluge Drivers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

presence of the human scientific outpost on the western shore of Arsudun this was
the first time non-Tran had been allowed to witness the solemn, traditional rites
which united male and female Tran in wedlock.

It was a delight Ethan could have forgone.

He kept quiet for Hunnar and Elfa's sake. The business of betrothing consisted of a
lot of twitching and moaning and entirely too much talk. If not for the fact that the
two principals were close friends he would have declaimed his discomfort to all and
sundry and damn the consequences. He tried to tell himself he wasn't freezing, but
his body wouldn't buy it. So he concentrated instead on the more enjoyable
activities which had led up to this prolonged session of discomfort: the procession
through the town, the entrance into the castle, the swearing of the nobles, even
the formal divestiture of garments which had taken place outside the hall, the
clothing heaped into two piles between which the wedding procession had passed.

Would he truly have blasphemed if he'd kept his underwear?

He should have been grateful. What if tradition had called for the ceremony to have
taken place not within the castle but out on the bare plains of Arsudun? Inside the
temperature hovered close to freezing. Out on the plains it sank far below the point
where water moved in comfort. Only fires in a few stone basins held back the arctic
climate. One blazed not far away. Sticking his naked backside, or for that matter
any portion of his anatomy, close to the hot stone would have constituted an
unforgivable breach of etiquette. But he was going to have to do something soon.
Shivering and goose bumps were half funny. Frostbite was not.

"I can't take much more of this. "

"Concentrate on the ceremony, on the movements. Ain't it beautiful?"

"What I can hear of it between my chattering teeth, " Ethan replied.

"And ain't it great to see those two finally pledging their lives to each other?"

"Yes, yes, of course. " Maybe marrying Elfa would at last put to rest Hunnar's
groundless suspicions that she held some kind of perverse attraction for Ethan.
"That warms my thoughts but not my tail. "


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"Think warmth, then. "

"Easy for you to say. "

Skua eyed him reproachfully. "No it ain't easy for me to say, feller-me-lad. I'm as
cold as you are. You just ain't trying hard enough is all. Think about something