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

roots from the stream. When it was dark outside, they went to rest, though the youngest fidgeted and
coughed and fretted, too excited to sleep.

But Do-na-ti forced his eyes to close, his heart to slow to a regular beat. I will need all my strength
tomorrow, he told himself, as he slid quietly into sleep.

He dreamed of the moon, riding low in the west as its narrow arc went to rest. In that tenuous
light, he could see a great mass of the horned ones, their backs rough and woolly and dark
against the sun-bleached land. The moonlight glinted on horns here and there as they raised their
heads from cropping the grass or moved to a better patch of graze.

He seemed to float above them, seeing the calves grouped with their mothers in the center of the
herd, the bulls ringing them. Nothing threatened, and yet he could feel the wariness of those
immense animals. They were prepared, he realized, for any danger that might approach.

Floating in his dreams, Do-na-ti thought about the hunt tomorrow. Was this a warning? Was it a
promise of good hunting? He could not untangle all the possible meanings of this vision, as he
moved along the wind, drifting over the mass of animals until he came to its farther side.

He looked again at the moon in the west. To use the wind to his advantage, he would have to
move toward them from the north. Dressed in his dog-skin disguise, he must persuade those
shrewd old bulls that he was, indeed, only a wolf passing through the herd.

He wondered if for some reason that might not be possible when the time came. More and more
he felt that this was a dream of warning, a caution to him, who must play the dog tomorrow. Why
else should he be given this vision on the eve of the Great Hunt?

Do-na-ti struggled to wake, but the dream held him fast. The herd shifted restlessly, moving away
toward the south… toward the village where his sleeping body lay.

Behind there was a distant rumble, and threads of dark cloud began moving across the declining
moon. A flash interrupted the blackness to the north, and again thunder grumbled through the sky
and quivered in the earth. Was there a storm approaching, so soon after that other one on the day
he killed the badger?

Rain and wind would delay the hunt, cause the prey to become nervous and irritable, make the
danger for both "dog" and hunters too desperate to risk. Often storms stampeded the creatures,
sending them pounding away from the wind, to smash anything in their path until the weather
calmed again.
Chilly disappointment filled the young man. To miss his first hunt because of a storm… that would
be a dismal thing indeed.

He tried to move back toward the village and his sleeping body. The dart of lightning was nearer
now, and the thunder louder as he circled, bodiless, against the wind. The moon was peering
through a veil of cloud, as if ready to take shelter below the horizon, and he faced it, feeling that
it might lend him strength to stop this oncoming disaster.

"Bright One!" he tried to cry, although no sound came. "Oh, Bright One, drive away the storm!
Keep the Horned Ones in their place until we can drive them into our trap!"