"Ardath Mayhar - Hunters of the Plains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mayhar Ardath)

Now they sat at the points of a triangle whose center was the fire. To leave an empty space where the
Terrapin elder should have been would have left the village open to unthinkable perils, and they had
rearranged their positions to compensate.

Facing one another, they chanted softly, telling of a thousand seasons of rituals, a thousand young men
who had faced manhood wearing the hoods of their clan totems. The skills and strategies that kept their
kind alive among the many perils of this country served each succeeding generation, which added its own
inventions to the rest.



"In the season of fire from the sky,

when our people fled into the tall lands to the west,

we built our fires in an alien place.

The new-made men,

their hoods all fresh killed

and made by the hands of family
 to replace the old ones that had been lost

in the flight of the people,

danced in a different country.

Yet the chants were sung,

the steps were the same

that we have danced for long, for long."



That was the voice of Tu-ri-nit, as his fingers drummed lightly on a deer hide stretched over a willow
hoop.

From beyond the fire the quavering voice of Fe-ka-na took up the tale.



"Snows fell,

suns burned us,

but we lived and returned

to our own country.