"L. E. Modesitt - The Forever Hero 1 - Dawn for a distant Ear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

The boy's left leg hurt, still stiff from his encounter with the she coyote. He needed food,
better food than he could grub from the plains and the hills, food without the poisons that the
wild plants springing from the sickly soil carried.
Most times he could eat the yuccas and needle pears, but the coyote wound and its infection had
lowered his body's ability to digest the wild food.
He froze behind a thicker grubush and peered through the scraggly leaves at the wall. Too high-
more than twice his height, and even with a healthy leg, beyond his reach.
That meant the Maze. He had known that from the beginning, but had hoped ... He shivered, but
there was no escaping the need for the cleaner food that lay beyond the shambletown wall.
Tightening his grip on the jagged blade he carried in his left hand, he dropped farther down
the hillside and edged eastward, bit by bit.
Slide . . . pause . . . listen. Slide . . . pause . . . listen.
The pattern was nearly automatic, his ears straining for the click and scrabble of the rats, or
the pad and click of a foraging coyote seeking a shambletowner out alone after dark.



file:///F|/rah/L.%20E.%20Modesitt/Modesitt,%20...001%20-%20Dawn%20For%20A%20Distant%20Earth.txt (1 of 144) [5/22/03 12:14:51 AM]
 file:///F|/rah/L.%20E.%20Modesitt/Modesitt,%20L%20E%20-%20Forever%20Hero%2001%20-%20Dawn%20For%20A%20Distant%20Earth.txt

The scattered grubushes grew more thickly as he neared the tangled mass that comprised the
Maze. While they never crowded closely enough to provide a thicket or a constant cover, their
numbers and sharp leaves and twigs slowed his progress. He checked each before sliding toward it
to insure that no rat lay concealed there, no female coyote on the prowl for hungry cubs.
At last, the Maze towered above him.
He stopped, letting his breathing smooth. He sniffed, the thin nostrils in the narrow nose
dilating to catch the scents nearby, and those from the Maze.
Crouching by one hole, he edged away as he caught the pungent odor of rat, all too fresh. A
second entrance he rejected for the musty smell that indicated neither rat nor the air circulation
necessary for an access to the less closely guarded eastern wall of the shambletown.
A third and fourth hole were each rejected.
A fifth was too low and reeked of land poison.
Click, click, scrabble.
The blade flashed. The rat darted-but not quickly enough.
The rat's purpled gray coat was scarred, streaked with silver.
The boy nodded. The rat, half the height to his knee, had been slow. Not sick, but old.
He left the carcass. While the hide might have been useful, only the shambletowners had the
ability to turn it into leather. The meat was inedible, even for him.
Checking the hole from which the rat had emerged, he rejected it, and continued his slow
movement along the Maze.
Deciding that none of the lower openings were likely to provide the access he needed, he
switched his attention to the higher holes.
At last, he located a promising entrance, slightly above his head, but with easy handholds. He
climbed to the left side, to avoid appearing in front of the dark opening. He let his nose test
the scents, catching the mixture of free-flowing air, overlaid with the scent of shambletowners
and their excrement, and the faint hint of omnipresent rat.
Blade in hand, he eased into the Maze, his hawk-eyes dilating farther to adjust to the gloom
that was darker than the blackest of the clouded nights.
From behind him, he could hear the wind whistle as it shifted more to the north.
The passage branched, one dark pit stretching below, from where the scent of rat oozed upward,