"Lee Killough - The Leopard's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Killough Lee)

Startled, she glanced up before she could stop herself, so that by the time she saw the leopard
sprawled along the tree limb overhead, there was no way to pretend she had not heard the beast. She
could only hope that the sister warrior gathering wood nearby had heard nothing. Jeneba bent to reach
for another piece of wood. "I'm not your sister," she hissed.
"Ah?" the leopard said lazily. Jeneba glanced up to find it regarding her with amusement. Its tawny
eyes blinked with cat slowness. "But I smell leopard in you, and see that you have leopard-tawny eyes..
You also understand me, which no one fully human can."
Jeneba set her jaw. "I am Dasa and a noble of the city of Kiba, not a leopard's daughter." Turning
away, she started back for camp with her wood.
The leopard sighed. "How unfortunate, for if you were my sister, I could warn you about this place."
The smell of carrion seemed suddenly stronger. Jeneba's neck prickled. Whirling back toward the
leopard, she cried, "What warning?"
But the leopard had gone.
Something else moved in the woods, however. Jeneba saw nothing, but she heard stealthy steps.
Dropping her wood, she raced for camp... for her sword.
Warriors stared in astonishment as she raced past them.
"Swords," she said, and had no time to explain further. As her fingers closed around the hilt of her
sword, a gust of wind brought a chorus of whoops madder than those of hyena and a carrion reek in
such strength that Jeneba choked and the horses reared snorting against their tethers. She whirled, tossing
aside the sheath, and the woods erupted with men who looked as though they had been split lengthwise.
Smaller than the Dasa and naked except for loincloths and gray clay painted on their skin, each hopped
on one leg and swung a club with his single hand.
Cold rushed through Jeneba. Wachiru! No wonder she had seen nothing in the woods. The half-men
kept their invisible off-side toward the camp as they approached. All they could not hide was the stench
of their man-eating breath.
And yet, wachiru attacking men in a group? Unheard of. She answered their cries with a war yell of
her own, however, and hacked at the nearest attacker. He parried the blow with his club then pivoting
away, vanished. Jeneba slashed for the spot where he had stood, but her sword passed through without
meeting resistance. The wachiru reappeared off to her left, his club already aimed at her head.
Jeneba ducked barely in time. The club caught at her hair in passing, clicking off the beads. Fear burst
in her with icy fire. Straightening, she lunged slashing, and this time her blade opened the wachiru's belly.
He doubled screaming, bloody loops of gut ballooning between his hands. Jeneba retreated until she
stood with her back against a tree, sword ready for another attack from any side.
Around her wachiru clubbed warriors to the ground. Screaming horses snapped their tethers and
bolted into the woods. Other wachiru dragged unconscious members of the wood gathering party into
camp. Several warriors managed to reach their swords, however, Mseluku among them, and they
hacked away at every wachiru they saw. Seeing their opponents was the problem.
Jeneba shouted a warning at Mseluku, who had three half-men closing on him off-side first. She
sprang away from her tree to his aid. No monster would eat her uncle!
Something moved at the edge of her vision, but before she could dodge the club she sensed coming,
pain burst through her. Mala-Lesa recreated the heavens in her skull in a single fiery burst and Jeneba fell
into a bottomless black hole... through the earth, through the underworld of recent ancestral shades,
through the dimmer kingdom of older shades, and into the lowest depths where the very oldest shades
must finally go, a place without light, warmth, feeling, or even memory.
Or did it have sound after all? Shades gibbered shrilly at each other. Then she saw light, a dancing red
glow, and felt a lumpy surface beneath her. Her hand finally convinced her that, astonishingly, she
remained alive and on earth. It still grasped her sword.
She opened her eyes painfully to find herself at the base of the tree she had used to guard her back.
Although drums pounded in her head and great stones seemed to weight it, she could lift it enough to see
torches set in the ground and wachiru men, women, and children hopping back and forth across the