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

neither of that pair who carried the light.
"Stand--" The command from behind the source of the light was an emphatic order,
and it was followed by another. "Drop your knife!"
Sander might be very close to death, for he was sure only the will of the
speaker held the animals in check, but now he shook his head.
"I do not obey the orders of unknowns who skulk in the dark," he returned. "I am
not a hunter or harmer of men."
"Blood cries for blood, stranger," snapped the voice. "Behind you streams
blood--kin-blood. If there is an accounting, then it is mine, seeing that no one
else lives in Padford now--"
"I came to a town of the dead," Sander returned. "If you seek blood for blood,
look elsewhere, stranger. When I rode from the south, there were only the dead
within half-burned walls."
The light held steady on him and no answer came forth. But that the stranger had
been willing to speak without immediate attack was, Sander believed, in his
favor.
"It is true that you are no Sea Shark," the voice observed slowly.
Sander could understand the words. But the accent with which they were spoken
differed both from that of the Mob and that of the Traders.
"Who are you?" Now the voice sharpened in a new demand.
"I am Sander, once of Jak Mob, and I am a smith."
"Soooo?" The voice drawled that as if not quite believing. "And where tents your
Mob this night, smith?"
"Westward."
"Yet you travel east. Smiths are not wanderers, stranger. Or is there blood
guilt and kin-death lying in your back trail?"
"No. My father, who was smith, died, and they would have it that I was not apt
enough to take his place. Thus I took out-rights--" He was growing irritated.
That he must patiently answer this quizzing out of the dark awoke a small stir
of anger in him. Now he boldly asked in return:
"Who are you?"
"One not to meddle with, stranger!" snapped that other. "But it seems you speak
the truth and so are not meat for us this night."
The light snapped out instantly. He could hear a stirring in the dark. Rhin
whined in relief. Though the koyot could be a formidable fighter when he wished,
it was plain he preferred the absence of those animals and whoever controlled
them to their presence.
Sander himself felt tension seep away. The voice was gone, taking with it the
strange hounds of its hunting. He settled back, and after a while he slept.
Sander's slumber was full of dreams in which dead men arose to face him with



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broken weapons in their slack hands. He roused now and again, sweating, hardly
sure of what was dream and what reality. He could then hear sometimes a soft
growl deep in Rhin's throat, as if the koyot scented something threatening. Yet
the voice and the light were surely gone.