"Norton, Andre - No night without stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Andre Norton)

it should be with all life forms. So does the Power teach us who are born to
serve Its purposes. Yes, your koyot will accept us, for he knows we mean no harm
to one another."
The fisher who had disappeared was returning. Clamped in its jaws was the end of
a bundle that it bumped and tugged along the ground until it could be dropped at
Fanyi's feet. She loosened lashings to draw forth a square of drab cloth, which
had a hole in the center. Through this she thrust her head and then belted the
loose folds about her with a woven strip, hiding her scarlet garment and her
adornments under the dim gray overtunic.
The rest of her equipment for the trip seemed to be in two separate bags, their
strings knotted together. Sander took them from her when she would have slung
them across her shoulder and arranged them with his own bags on Rhin. He could
not ride while she walked, and the two of them would be too great a weight for
the koyot.
Fanyi whistled, sending the fishers bounding away, ranging ahead. For the first
time Sander relaxed a little. Those creatures must form an effective scouting
force, if Fanyi could truly depend upon them.
"How far do we go?" he asked, finding that she matched strides with apparently
little effort.
"That I do not know. My people do--did--" she corrected herself, "not travel far.
They were fisherfolk, and they worked the fields along the river. We had Traders
come from the north--and more lately from the south. From the south," she
repeated and her tone was bleak. "Yes, now I think that those came before the
raid to sniff out how helpless we were. If I had not been afar--"
"But what could you have done?" Sander was honestly puzzled. She seemed to
believe that her presence, or the lack of it, had sealed the fate of the
village. He could not believe that.
She glanced toward him, clearly astounded at his question.
"I am one with Power. It is my thought-holding that walled my people in safety.
There was no danger that came to them that I, or Kai or Kayi, could not sniff
out and give warning of. Just as I knew, even though I sought with open heart
and mind the will of the Great Moon, when death came to those who believed in
me! Their blood lies on my hands, that I must avenge--for upon me rests the
burden of this deed."
"And how can you avenge them? Do you know those who came raiding?"
"At the proper time I shall cast the stones." Her hand went to the breast of her
drab overcovering. "Then their names shall be made clear. But first I must find
in the Before Place such a weapon as shall make those who delighted in slaughter
wish that they had never been born!" There was a cruel cast now to her generous
lips and such a look on her face as gave Sander a small, cold feeling.
He himself had never felt such great anger--even against Ibbets--as to death-wish
another. When the White Ones had struck he had been only a child of too young an
age to be greatly affected by the battle, even though his mother had been one of
the victims of it. His whole being had been focused on learning what he could do
with his hands. And weapons were only matters of fine workmanship. He rarely
thought beyond their fashioning to the uses to which they would be eventually
put.
What he had seen in the destroyed village had sickened and revolted him, but it
had not touched his own being. For those dead were strangers, none close to him.
Had he discovered one of the enemy left behind through some chance he would have