"John Norman - Gor 12 - Beasts of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

watching me.
The animal was some twenty feet in length, some eleven hundred pounds in weight, a forest sleen,
domesticated. It was double fanged and six-legged. It crouched down and inched forward. Its belly
fur must have touched the tiles. It wore a leather sleen collar but there was no leash on the
leash loop.
I had thought it was trained to hunt tabuk with archers, but it clearly was not tabuk it hunted
now.
I knew the look of a hunting sleen. It was a hunter of men.
It swiftly inched forward, then stopped.
When in the afternoon I had seen it in its cage, with its trainer, Bertram of Lydius, it had not
reacted to me other than as to the other observers. It had not then, I knew, been put upon my
scent.
It crept forward another foot.
I did not think it had been loose from its cage long, for it would take such a beast, a sleen.
Gor's finest tracker, only moments to make its way silently through the halls to this chamber.
The beast did not take its eyes from me.
I saw its four hind legs begin to gather under it.
Its breathing was becoming more rapid. That I did not move puzzled it.
It then inched forward another foot. It was now within its critical attacking distance.
I did nothing to excite it.
It lashed its tail back and forth. Had it been longer on my scent I think I might have had less
time for its hunting frenzy would have been more upon it, a function in part of the secretions of
certain glands.
Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, I reached toward the couch and seized one of the great furs in
my right hand.
The beast watched me closely. For the first time it snarled, menacingly.
Then the tail stopped lashing, and became almost rigid. Then the ears lay back against its head.
It charged, scratching and scrambling, slipping suddenly, on the tiles. The girl screamed. The
cast fur, capelike, shielding me, enveloped the leaping animal. I leaped to the couch, and rolled
over it, and bounded to my feet. I heard the beast snarling and squealing, casting aside the fur
with an angry shaking of its body and head. Then it stood, enraged, the fur torn beneath its paws,
snarling and hissing. It looked up at me. I stood now upon the couch, the ax of Torvaldsland in my
hand.
I laughed, the laugh of a warrior.
"Come my friend," I called to it. "let us engage."
It was a truly brave and noble beast. Those who scorn the sleen I think do not know him. Kurii
respect the sleen, and that says much for the sleen, for its courage, its ferocity and its
indomitable tenacity.
The girl screamed with terror.
The ax caught the beast transversely and the side of its head struck me sliding from the great
blade.
I cut at it again on the floor, half severing the neck.
"It is a beautiful animal," I said. I was covered with its blood. I heard men outside in the hall.
Thurnock, and Clitus, and Publius, and Tab, and others, weapons in hand, stood at the door.
"What has happened?" cried Thurnock.
"Secure Bertram of Lydius," I said.
Men rushed from the door.
I went to fetch a knife from my weapons. They lay beside and behind the couch.
I shared bits of the heart of the sleen with my men, and, together, cupping our hands, we drank
its blood in a ritual of sleen hunters.