"S. M. Stirling - Shikari in Galveston" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

"Yi-a/i, swamp-devils, right enough." The Alligator chieftain's guardsman nodded. "Burned a settler's
cabin east of Muskrat Creek—old Stinking Pehte."
"Not Stinking Pehte the Friendless? Pehte sunna Dubai?"
"Him 'n' none other; made an ax-land claim there 'n' built a cabin two springs ago, him 'n' his wife 'n'
younglings. Set to clearing land for com. Jefe Carul saw the smoke 'n' called out the neighborhood men
in posse. Caught 'em this side of the Black River. Even got a prisoner back alive—a girl."
Robre's eyebrows went up. "Surprised they didn't eat her," he said.
"They'd just started in to skin her. Ate her kin first. 'S how we caught 'em—stopped for their fun."
Stinking Pehte must have been an even bigger fool than everyone thought, to settle that far east, Robre thought,
but it wouldn't do to say it aloud. Men had to resent an insult to one of their own clan and totem, even if they
agreed with it in their hearts.
"Where's ol' Grippem 'n' Ayzbitah?" the guard asked, looking for the big hounds that usually followed
the hunter.
Robre cleared his throat and spat into the mud of the road, turning his head to cover a sudden prickle
in his eyes. "Got the dog-sickness, had to put 'em down," he said.
The guards made sympathetic noises at the hard news. "Good hunting?" Tomul went on, waving
toward the rawhide-covered bundles on the Bear Creek man's pack saddles.
"Passable—just passable," Robre replied, with mournful untruth. He pushed back his broad-brimmed,
low-crowned hat to scratch meditatively at his raven-black hair. "Mostly last winter's cure, the
second-rate stuff I held back in spring. Hope to do better this year."
"Jefe Carul killed two cows for God-thanks at sunrise," Tomul said; it was two hours past dawn now.
"Probably some of the beef left if you've a hunger."
Robre snorted and shook his head. Sacrificial beef was free to any man of the Seven Tribes, but also
likely to be old and tough. Lord o' Sky didn't care about the quality of the Cattle, just their number, it
being the thought that counted. He wasn't that short of silver.
Tomul went on: "See you around, then; we'll drink a mug. Mind you don't break the Fair's peace-bans
while you're here, or it's a whuppin' from the Jefe."
"I'm no brawler," Robre said defensively.
"Then give me these back," Tomul chuckled in answer, pulling down the corner of his mouth with a
little finger to show two missing molars.
The other warriors around the deerskin howled laughter and Robre laughed back, taking up the lead
rein of his forward pack horse and leading the beasts under the massive timber gateway, between hulking
log blockhouses. The huge black-oak timbers that supported the gate on either side were carved and
painted; Coyote on the left grinning with his tongue lolling over his fangs and a stogie in the corner of his
mouth, the Corn Lady on the right holding a stalk of maize in one hand and a hoe in the other, and God
the Father on the lintel above. Robre bowed his head for an instant as he passed beneath the stern
bearded face of the Lord of Sky, murmuring a luck-word.
' The pack horses followed him into the throng within, shying and snorting and rolling their eyes a bit.
Robre sympathized; the crowds and stink were enough to gag a buzzard. Nearly a hundred people lived
here year-round; Jefe Carul in his two-story fort-mansion of squared timbers, and his wives, his children;
his household men and their wives and children in ordinary cabins of mud-chinked logs; a few slaves and
landless, clanless laborers in shacks; plus craftsmen and tinkers and peddlers who found Dannulsford a
convenient headquarters, and their dependents.
Now it swarmed with twenty times that number; the Dannulsford Fair got bigger every year, it seemed.
This year's held more people than Robre had ever seen in one place before, until only narrow crowded
lanes were left between booths and sheds and tents and more folk still spilled over into camps outside the
oak logs of the stockade. The air was thick with wood smoke, smells of dung and frying food and fresh
corn bread, man's sweat, and the smells of leather, horses, mules and oxen, and dogs. The Fair came
after the corn and cotton were in but before hard frost and the prime pig-slaughtering season; a time for
the Jefe to kill cattle for the Lord o' Sky and to preside over disputes brought for judgment, and for the