"David Gemmell - Rigante 4 - Stormrider" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gemmel David)

tree. Squinting against the fierce cold wind, and the flurrying snow, Kaelin focused on the tree.
Finbarr's older son, Basson, dressed in a thin red nightshirt, was clinging to the upper branches.
Kicking off his snowshoes Kaelin scrambled up the last part of the slope, his weariness forgotten.
Even as he came to the tree he knew that the boy was dead.
The ten-year-old had frozen to death. There was ice in his blond hair, and his skin was blue.
Great gouges had been torn from the trunk of the tree below him. Kaelin recognized the marks as
the talons of a grizzly. They reached up almost nine feet.
Moving to the shattered wall of the cabin he saw the timbers had been smashed open. There were
talon grooves in the shattered wood and blood upon the snow around the ruined door. Shrugging off
his pack he pulled off his gloves. There would be no point trying to load the musket. The firing
mechanism would be frozen solid. Opening his heavy sheepskin coat he pulled one of his long-
barrelled Emburley pistols from its leather sheath and cocked it. He did not go into the cabin,
but examined the bloodstained ground. There were bear tracks and a deep channel where something
had been dragged towards the trees - something leaking gore.
With a sinking heart Kaelin Ring followed the channel. What he found, just inside the tree line,
sickened him. The remains of the family were scattered here. Finbarr's head - half the face bitten
away - was resting by a tree root. Of Ural there was part of a leg, and a ripped and bloody
section of skirt. Kaelin had neither the heart nor the stomach to search for signs of the child,
Feargol.
He returned to the cabin. There were deep claw marks on the outer, smashed walls. Inside, the
table was broken in half, and two of the chairs were shattered. Several shelves had been torn from
the walls, and the floor was littered with broken crockery. A discharged musket and a pistol lay
close to the door of the back bedroom. A broken sabre was resting against the far wall, and a
bloody kitchen knife had been hurled into the hearth. From what Kaelin could see - and the fact
that Basson had scrambled up the tree in his nightshirt - the bear had come upon the cabin at
night. It had smashed at the door and the frame, tearing out the timbers. This had not been done
quickly. Finbarr and Ural had time to load and fire the musket and pistol. As the bear came
through they had fought it with sword and knife. Spray patterns of blood upon the walls showed
that they had died here. Basson must have ducked past the bear and run for the trees.
Kaelin moved to the hearth. Dropping to one knee he retrieved the bloodstained kitchen knife. Then
he pressed his hand to the hearth stones. They were still slightly warm.
The attack had been last night.
Rising, Kaelin walked through to the small back bedroom. There was no sign here of disruption. The
boys' bunk beds stood against the far wall, opposite the large double bed shared by Finbarr and
Ural. Kaelin sat down upon the bed. This was a harsh land, and he had both killed men and seen
others die upon the battlefield. Nothing like this, though.
It was unheard of for a bear - even a grizzly - to attack a cabin in this way. Often the beasts
would scavenge around for scraps of food, but mostly they would keep away from people. Every high-
lander knew the two main rules when it came to dealing with such animals. Avoidance came first -
especially if it was a mother with cubs, or it was feeding, or defending a kill. The second rule -
if avoidance was not possible - was to remain calm and move slowly away from the beast. Given the
choice bears tended to leave humans alone. Most attacks Kaelin had heard of had come when people
had blundered upon a feeding bear and surprised it. The rips and tears in the timbers of the cabin
showed that this grizzly had launched a frenzied assault in order to reach the people inside.
He glanced across at the bunk beds, and thought of little Feargol in his white cap. Finbarr had
been over-protective of both his sons. He had already lost one child, his oldest boy, to a fever
that was raging in Black Mountain. Finbarr had been determined to keep his other children safe. It
was one of the reasons he had moved his family to this high cabin.
Kaelin shivered, his exhaustion returning. No time now to mourn the dead, he thought. The bear
would be back to finish his feeding. Kaelin knew he should be long gone when that happened. Cold