"Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Mitchell)

She'd hunted for herself and the occa when the smoked seal was eaten up, swooping — while
remaining mindful of the ground she kept away — to snip the heads off wild turkeys or ptarmigan with
her scimitar, to hack the necks of deer. Then landing, settling into snowy woods, she'd gathered dry
branches for her fire, started it with her flint and steel... then butchered the meat out while the occa
landed, loomed beside her, hobbling on knees — and what would have been elbows, otherwise — and
poked at her with its long jaw, whining for bird or venison bones and bowels.
In all those weeks, Patience had been troubled only three times. An ice-fisher had refused to
exchange her smallest silver coin for a meal, so she'd had to take two char from him — but only sliced
him lightly, so as not to cripple, since property rights were sacred.
Later, while ground-walking through lower Map-Pennsylvania, well south of the ice-wall, she'd been
chased up a tree by a hungry black bear. Too startled, too suddenly set upon, to push the ground away
for rising in the air, she'd risen from the tree limbs soon enough and left the bear snuffling, clinging halfway
up its climb to reach her.
Patience had been troubled those two times, and one time more. Deep in Map-Alabama, almost to
the Gulf, she'd fluttered down to kill a woman who'd thrown a stone and almost struck her as she sailed
over a hedge of holly.
…. The hill ridge thumped beneath her in her mind, and Patience thought-stepped... thought-stepped
down the western slope, the wind chilly at her hat's brim, lightly buffeting her face. Her face, charming,
absolutely pretty by the judgment of everyone who knew her, was reddened, roughened by the weather
of travel. But the inherited bit in the brain, that with training allowed a talented few New Englanders —
and the very rare exceptions from other places — to air-walk and also keep warm on the ice, was no
use in smoothing one's complexion. It seemed unfair.
Before her, across a wide valley to the west, rose mountains harsher than the Map-Smokies had
been. The Sierra. A cold wind flowed down from them, and Patience thought heat and caused it to
warm her ears, her gloved fingers... the tip of her nose.
She sailed on, out over the valley — sitting properly upright, her sheathed scimitar held across her
lap. It was her joy, a present from her mother on her sixteenth birthday — two years ago, now — and a
true Peabody of a thousand doublings and hammerings. She called it 'Merriment,' since it had antic
curling patterns flowing in the surface of its steel, and also a modest, amusing style of slicing. She'd killed
Teresa Bondi with it in a duel, and Tessie's parents had never forgiven her, said she was cruel, a spoiled
brat, and bad.
Patience looked back and saw the occa laboring far behind. It appeared to be holding something in
its long jaw.
She stopped in the air — a difficult thing to do — and sat waiting for it, rocking slightly in the
mountains' breeze. The occa shied and swung on great leathery wings, with the foot-long toothed jaw
and bald knob of its idiot head turned away as if not to see her. It did have something in its mouth.
Patience, impatient, whistled it over, and it slowly sidled toward her through the air, its long bat arms
and long bat fingers — supporting a skin-membrane's wingspan of almost thirty Warm-time feet —
fiddling with wind currents as it came.
Patience whistled again, made a furious face — and the creature came swiftly flapping through the
air to her, wind-burned and whining, its wings buffeting alongside. Her baggage duffels and Webster's
basket were strapped to its humped back. A sheep's leg hung bleeding from its jaws.
Patience leaned to rap it sharply on the head with her scab-barded sword, and dipped a sudden few
feet as her concentration faltered, so she had to recover. "Drop!... Drop!" The creature was getting too
fat for good flying as it was.
The occa muttered what was almost a word.
"Drop it!"
The sheep's leg fell away through the air. The occa bent its awkward head to watch it go.
"Now," Patience said, "you fucking fly. And keep up!"