"Roland Green - Conan and the Gods of the Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Roland)

CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN

Prologue

The hunter was of the Leopard Clan of the Kwanyi. He had been born with eyes and

ears almost as keen as those of the clan totem. He had sharpened both further by

many years spent in the forests between the Gao River to the west and the

forbidden city of Xuchotl to the east.

Neither eyes nor ears now told of any menace close to him. Nor was it likely

that this stretch of the forest held any. It was near the foot of Thunder

Mountain itself. The hunter had learned its paths and streams, its drinking

holes and fallen trees, even before his manhood ceremony.
Yet the hunter fled as though all the kin of the dragon he had found in the

forest near Xuchotl were ravening on his trail.

He had kept up this pace every waking moment for three days now. He had run

until he could neither run, walk, nor stand, only fall senseless to the ground

and sleep like a serpent with a pig in its belly. Then he would wake, to drink

of the nearest clean water and run once more.

The pace had taken its toll. His dark skin was so caked with dirt that the

hunter's tattoo of a leopard's paw on his right shoulder and the warrior's

tattoo of a spear on his breast had all but vanished. Only the clan

scarifications on both heels remained visible, to mark him and his footprints as

of the Kwanyi.

His breath came in rasping sobs. His eyes stared ahead, next to blind, so that

from time to time, a dangling vine slapped his skin. Once a stub of branch tore

away his loinguard, leaving him to run on naked save for anklets of sodden

feathers and the spear in his hand.

He could have run faster without the spear, for it was the stout weapon of the