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

aroused in him hero worship. And he could not have put a name to the new emotion that added so suddenly
to his burning desire to make good, not only to hold the small niche in Survey which he had already so
painfully achieved, but to climb, until he could stand so in such a group talking easily to that tall man, his
uncovered head bronze-yellow in the sunlight, his cool gray eyes pale in his brown face.

Not that any of those wild dreams born in that minute or two had been realized in the ensuing months.
Probably those dreams had always been as wild as the ones reported by the first scout on Warlock. Shann
grinned wryly now at the short period of childish hope and half-confidence that he could do big things.
Only one Thorvald had ever noticed Shann’s existence in the Survey camp, and that had been Garth.

Garth Thorvald, a far less impressive—one could say “smudged”—copy of his brother. Swaggering with
an arrogance Ragnar never showed, Garth was a cadet on his first mission, intent upon making Shann
realize the unbridgeable gulf between a labor hand and an officer-to-be. He had appeared to know right
from their first meeting just how to make Shann’s life a misery.

Now, in this slit of valley wall away from the domes, Shann’s fists balled. He pounded them against the
earth in a way he had so often hoped to plant them on Garth’s smoothly handsome face, his well-muscled
body. One didn’t survive the Dumps of Tyr without learning how to use fists, and boots, and a list of tricks
they didn’t teach in any academy. He had always been sure that he could take Garth if they mixed it up.
But if he had loosed the tight rein he had kept on his temper and offered that challenge, he would have lost
his chance with Survey. Garth had proved himself able to talk his way out of any scrape, even minor
derelictions of duty, and he far outranked Shann. The laborer from Tyr had had to swallow all that the
other could dish out and hope that on his next assignment he would not be a member of young Thorvald’s
team. Though, because of Garth Thorvald, Shann’s toll of black record marks had mounted dangerously
high and each day the chance for any more duty tours had grown dimmer.

Shann laughed, and the sound was ugly. That was one thing he didn’t have to worry about any longer.
There would be no other assignments for him, the Throgs had seen to that. And Garth . . . well, there would
never be a showdown between them now. He stood up. The Throg ship had disappeared; they could push
on.

He found a break in the cliff wall which was climbable, and he coaxed the wolverines after him. When
they stood on the heights from which the falls tumbled, Taggi and Togi rubbed against him, cried for his
attention. They, too, appeared to need the reassurance they got from contact with him, for they were also
fugitives on this alien world, the only representatives of their kind.

Since he did not have any definite goal in view, Shann continued to be guided by the stream, following its
wanderings across a plateau. The sun was warm, so he carried his jacket slung across one shoulder. Taggi
and Togi ranged ahead, twice catching skitterers, which they devoured eagerly. A shadow on a sun-baked
rock sent the Terran skidding for cover until he saw that it was cast by one of the questing falcons from the
upper peaks. But that shook his confidence, so he again sought cover, ashamed at his own carelessness.

In the late afternoon he reached the far end of the plateau, faced a climb to peaks which still bore cones of
snow, now tinted a soft peach by the sun. Shann studied that possible path and distrusted his own powers
to take it without proper equipment or supplies. He must turn either north or south, though he would then
have to abandon a sure water supply in the stream. Tonight he would camp where he was. He had not
realized how tired he was until he found a likely half-cave in the mountain wall and crawled in. There was
too much danger in fire here; he would have to do without that basic comfort of his kind.

Luckily, the wolverines squeezed in beside him to fill the hole. With their warm furred bodies sandwiching