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

Kwanyi, a man's length of ironwood sapling with a triangular iron head as broad

as a man's hand. Yet that thought never entered his mind. While he bore the

spear, no warrior of the Kwanyi could doubt his courage.

The end of the hunter's run came suddenly, in the form of a jutting root. It

caught his ankle, and even above the rasp of his tortured lungs, he heard bone

snap. Then pain struck him twice, once as his head knocked against a rotten

stump and once in the ankle as sundered bones cried out.

The hunter lay still until the pains eased and he knew that he would not at once

become senseless. That would be death. This part of the forest held few dangers
for a healthy hunter with both wits and weapons. It was otherwise for a man

lying unaware of his surroundings.

When he dared move his head, the hunter rolled over and looked at his ankle. It

was already swelling, and the pain was a spear of fire thrust up his leg. He

would not be walking on that ankle again before the rains came—or ever if the

God-Men of Thunder Mountain did not give him their healing. Poultices, purges,

and the hands of village wise-women could do little against such ruin to bone

and muscle.

In the next moment, the hunter began to doubt that he would even live to be

spurned by the God-Men. Where he had seen only vines and thick-trunked trees,

four men now stood. Each carried a spear; one carried a bow as well. Their

loinguards, headbands, anklets, and tattoos alike named them warriors of the

Monkey Clan.

This did nothing to raise the hunter's spirits. Chabano, Paramount Chief of the

Kwanyi, was himself of the Monkey Clan. He would not have been chief for twelve

years had he allowed his clansmen to feud at will with the Leopards, the