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

their cries.
Rhin's head swung around twice toward their back trail. He growled, and his
uneasiness gripped Sander in turn. Though it seemed the town was wholly given
over to the dead, it was true that Sander had not delved too deeply in the
ruins. What if some survivor, perhaps shaken out of his wits by the terror of
the raid, lurked there, had seen Sander and Rhin come and go? They might now be
hunted by such.
Climbing on the top of a dune, along the sides of which grew tough sea-bleached



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grass, Sander studied the still-smoking buildings. Nothing moved save the birds.
However, he did not discount Rhin's uneasiness, knowing he could depend upon the
acute senses of the koyot to give him fair warning if they were followed.
He would have liked to have ridden, but the slippery sand gave such uncertain
footing that he kept on as they were. He angled away from the wave line now, for
there lay drifts of wood which looked ready to entrap the unwary. Now and then a
shell lay exposed in the damp sand. Sander could not turn away from them, eyeing
with amazement the fantastic patterns on these jewels from the sea. He dropped
some into his belt pouch. Like a bright bird's feather or a tumbled-smooth
stone, they delighted him. He dreamed momentarily of setting them in bands of
copper, that metal which so easily answered to the skill he had learned, to make
such articles of adornment as the Mob had never seen.
The sand became covered with coarse grass, which in turn changed to meadowland.
But Sander disliked this too-open country. He could see, forming a dark line
across the horizon, the beginning of wooded land. While his people were of the
open plains to the west, they also knew northern woods, and he could see the
value of finding cover. However, he was enough a judge of travelers' distances
to be sure he could not reach that forest before nightfall. What he wanted now
was a camp site which might offer his some measure of defense, if Rhin's
instinct was proven correct and they were to face some danger out of the dark.
He would not dare a fire tonight, wanting no beacon that might draw anyone--or
anything--that prowled this country. So at last he settled on a stand of rocks,
huddled together as if the stones themselves had drawn close for comfort in an
hour of need.
Jerking up handfuls of the grass, he pulled and patted that into a nest. Then he
brought out the dried fish and shared with Rhin. Ordinarily, the koyot would
have gone off hunting on his own. But it would seem that this night he was not
about to leave Sander.
As the young man watched the twilight draw in, felt the chill of the night winds
which swept from the sea bringing the strange scents of that water world, his
weariness grew. He could hear nothing save the wash of the waves, the sounds of
birds. And Rhin, though he held his ears aprick, also manifestly listening with
all his might, did not yet show any signs of real alarm.
Tired as he was from the day's journeying, Sander could not sleep. Over him
arched the sky in which sparked eyes of the night. The Rememberers said those
were other suns, very far away, and around them perhaps moved worlds such as