"Andre Norton - Witch World - Warlock of the Witch World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

“Against what do we bare swords here, Kemoc?” It was Rothorf of Dolmain who
came up beside me as I watched that interweaving which seemed so sinister.
“Strange things.” I gave him the best answer that I could. He was one of the
half-blood ones found among the Borderers. His mother had been of the Karsten refuges.
Rescued by Sulcar seamen, she had later married into that seaborne race. But it was a
mixture which had not proved too happy. When her sea lord had fallen in one of the raids
along the coast of Alizor, she had returned to her own people. Her son had the frame of
the bull-shouldered sea rovers and their fair hair, so that always among the Old Race he
was marked. Inwardly he was of his mother’s people, having no wish for the sea, but a
love for the hills. Thus he had come to the Borderers and we had been blooded together in
a raid before we were truly men.

“It is true then; this is a land bewitched.” He asked no question, but made an
observation.
“Yes. But once it was a fair land. By our efforts it may so be again. Yet it will be a long
time—”
“Before we cleanse it?” he finished for me. “What manner of enemy do we front?”
There was a briskness in that which returned me to the old days when Rothorf had
looked upon maps in the hills and then waited for the orders to move out.

Uneasiness moved in me. These old comrades (drawn from a war, it was true, but a
war which seemed simple beside the complexities which faced us here), would they be as
children blundering among the dangers they could not foresee? What had we done to
them? Kyllan, when he had returned from that geas sending into Estcarp, had reasoned
so: that he was drawing after him those of his blood, perhaps untimely to their deaths.
Now I knew what he had felt then.
“All manner, Rothorf, and some of which we have no knowledge.” I spoke then of the
Gray Ones and the Rasti, but also of such deceits as the Keplian-stallion which had nearly
borne Kyllan to his death, and of the traps which awaited the over-curious and
under-cautious. He listened to me gravely, not questioning anything I said, though much
of it must have sounded wild.

“A place where legends walk,” he commented at last. “It would seem we should
search our memories of childhood tales to be warned. How far is it to this safe Valley of
the Green Folk?”

“Another day’s journey. We muster there.”
“To attack where?”

I shook my head. “That we do not know. They still wish to bring to our warn-horn
any uncommitted forces left.”

We posted guards as the night drew in, the clouds bringing it early to us. No rain fell
from them, though they looked heavy-bellied, as if they carried pent within them some
tempest. I saw flashes of light about the hills, as bright and crackling as the force whips of
the Green People, but knew them to be lightning, foretelling the storm which sullenly
refused to break.

Kyllan was no more inclined to sleep than I and we paced around the ruins among