"Ursula K. Le Guin - Ekumen 02 - Planet of Exile" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

within a fort or a town within a town. Above it all a piece of one building stuck straight up into the air and towered there, bright with sunlight.



It was a mighty place, but almost empty of people.



In one sandy corner of the square, itself large as a field, a few farborn boys were playing. Two youths were having a fierce and skillful wrestling match, and a bunch of younger boys in padded coats and caps were as fiercely practicing cut-and-thrust with wood swords. The wrestlers were wonderful to watch, weaving a slow dangerous dance about each other, then engaging with deft and sudden grace. Along with a couple of farborns, tall and silent in their furs, Rolery stood looking on. When all at once the bigger wrestler went sailing head over heels to land flat on his brawny back she gave a gasp that coincided with his, and then laughed with surprise and admiration. "Good throw, Jonkendy!" a farborn near her called out, and a woman on the far side of the arena clapped her hands. Oblivious, absorbed, the younger boys fought on, thrusting and whacking and parrying.



She had not known the witchfolk bred up warriors, or prized strength and skill. Though she had heard of their wrestling, she had always vaguely imagined them as hunched back and spiderlike in a gloomy den over a potter's wheel, making the delicate bits of pottery and clear-stone that found their way into the tents of mankind. And there were stories and rumors and scraps of tales; a hunter was "lucky as a farborn"; a certain kind of earth was called witch-ore because the witchfolk prized it and would trade for it. But scraps were all she knew. Since long before her birth the Men of Askatevar had roamed in the east and north of their range. She had never come with a harvest-load to the storerooms under Tevar Hill, so she had never been on this western border at all till this moonphase, when all the Men of the Range of Askatever came together with their flocks and families to build the Winter City over the buried granaries. She knew nothing, really,



about the alien race, and when she became aware that the winning wrestler, the slender youth called Jonkendy, was staring straight into her face, she turned her head away and drew back in fear and distaste.



He came up to her, his naked body shining black with sweat. "You come from Tevar, don't you?" he asked, in human speech, but sounding half the words wrong. Happy with his victory, brushing sand off his lithe arms, he smiled at her.



"Yes."



"What can we do for you here? Anything you'want?"



She could not look at him from so close, of course, but his tone was both friendly and mocking. It was a boyish voice; she thought he was probably younger than she. She would not be mocked. "Yes," she said coofly. "I want to see that black rock on the sands."



"Go on out. The causeway's open."



He seemed to be trying to peer into her lowered face. She turned further from him.



"If anybody stops you, tell them Jonkendy Li sent you," he said, "or should I go with you?" '