"Andre Norton - Warlock Trilogy - Storm over Warlock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

him, Shann dozed, awoke, and dozed again, listening to night sounds—the screams, cries, hunting calls, of
the Warlock wilds. Now and again one of the wolverines whined and moved uneasily.

Fingers of sun picked at Shann through a shaft among the rocks, striking his eyes. He moved, blinked
blearily awake, unable for the first few seconds to understand why the smooth plasta wall of his bunk had
become rough red stone. Then he remembered. He was alone and he threw himself frantically out of the
cave, afraid the wolverines had wandered off. Only both animals were busy clawing under a boulder with a
steady persistence which argued there was a purpose behind that effort.

A sharp sting on the back of one hand made that purpose only too clear to Shann, and he retreated
hurriedly from the vicinity of the excavation. They had found an earth-wasp’s burrow and were hunting
grubs, naturally arousing the rightful inhabitants to bitter resentment.

Shann faced the problem of his own breakfast. He had had the immunity shots given to all members of the
team, and he had eaten game brought in by exploring parties and labeled “safe.” But how long he could
keep to the varieties of native food he knew was uncertain. Sooner or later he must experiment for himself.
Already he drank the stream water without the aid of purifiers, and so far there had been no ill results from
that necessary recklessness. Now the stream suggested fish. But instead he chanced upon another water
inhabitant which had crawled up on land for some obscure purpose of its own. It was a sluggish scaled
thing, an easy victim to his club, with thin, weak legs it could project at will from a finned and armor-
plated body.

Shann offered the head and guts to Togi, who had abandoned the wasp nest. She sniffed in careful
investigation and then gulped. Shann built a small fire and seared the firm greenish flesh. The taste was
flat, lacking salt, but the food eased his emptiness. Heartened, he started south, hoping to find water
sometime during the morning.

By noon he had his optimism justified with the discovery of a spring, and the wolverines had brought down
a slender-legged animal whose coat was close in shade to the dusky purple of the vegetation. Smaller than
a Terran deer, its head bore, not horns, but a ridge of stiffened hair rising in a point some twelve inches
above the skull dome. Shann haggled off some ragged steaks while the wolverines feasted in earnest,
carefully burying the head afterward.

It was when Shann knelt by the spring pool to wash that he caught the clamor of the clak-claks. He had
seen or heard nothing of the flyers since he had left the lake valley. But from the noise now rising in an
earsplitting volume, he thought there was a sizable colony near-by and that the inhabitants were thoroughly
aroused.
He crept on his hands and knees to near-by brush cover, heading toward the source of that outburst. If the
claks were announcing a Throg scouting party, he wanted to know it.

Lying flat, with branches forming a screen over him, the Terran gazed out on a stretch of grassland which
sloped at a fairly steep angle to the south and which must lead to a portion of countryside well below the
level he was now traversing.

The clak-claks were skimming back and forth, shrieking their staccato war cries. Following the erratic
dashes of their flight formation, Shann decided that whatever they railed against was on the lower level,
out of his sight from that point. Should he simply withdraw, since the disturbance was not near him?
Prudence dictated that; yet still he hesitated.

He had no desire to travel north, or to try and scale the mountains. No, south was his best path, and he