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

scattered, crude log cabins roofed in mossy shingles, surrounded by kitchen gardens and orchards of peach
and pecan, and farther out, patches of maize and cotton and sweet potatoes surrounded by
zigzagging split-rail fences. Corrals were numerous, too, for they seemed to live more by their herds
than their fields; the grasslands were full of long-horned, long-legged cattle and rough hairy horses, and the
woods swarmed with sounders of half-wild pigs.
Woods stood thicker on the eastern bank, wilder and more rank. The air over the Three Forks
River was full of birds, duck and geese on their southward journey, and types he didn't recognize.
Some were amazing, like living jewels of jade and turquoise and ruby, darting and hovering from flower to
flower with their wings an invisible blur. That sight alone had been worth stopping here, on his way back
from the European outposts of the Empire to its heartland in India.
"Sahib," grumbled Ranjit Singh, "This wasteland makes England look like a cultivated garden—like our
own land in Kashmir."
King nodded. England remained thinly peopled six generations after the Fall. Still, after long effort from
missionaries and settlers you could say it was civilized again in a provincial sort of way; farms and manors,
towns, and even a few small cities growing again in the shadow of the great ruin-mounds overgrown by
wildwood. Four millions dwelt there now, enough to give a human presence over most of such a small
island. The countryside here had the charm of true wilderness, if nothing else.
This little settlement called Dannulsford, on the other hand . . .
Squalid beyond words is too kind, he thought. The stink was as bad as the worst slum in Calcutta, which
was saying a good deal; smoke, offal, sewage' hides tacked to cabin walls or steeping in tanning pits, sweat
and packed bodies. The. water smelled for a mile downstream, as well.
"Probably they're not as bad when they're not jammed in together like this," he said. "And we won't be
here long. Off to the woods as soon as we can."
"Of woods we have seen enough, this past year and more, sahib," Ranjit Singh said, as he dutifully
followed Eric down the gangplank. "Europe is full of them."
"And the woods there full of danger," Eric chaffed. He'd just spent six months as part of the escort for a
party of archaeologists, exploring the ruins amid the lost cities of the Rhine Valley and points east. "We've
earned a holiday."
"In more woods?" the Sikh said sourly.
"For shikari, not battle," Eric said. "Some good hunting, a few trophies, and then back home."
"After this, even Bombay will feel like home," the Sikh said. "When we leave the train in Kashmir, I
shall kiss the dirt in thankfulness."
King shrugged, a wry turn to his smile. "Well, daffadar, you're free to spend your leave as you please."
Ranjit Singh snorted. "Speak no foolishness, sahib," he said. "If you wish to hunt, we hunt."
The Imperial officer shrugged in resignation. King's epaulettes bore the silver pips of a lieutenant;
Ranjit's arm carried the three chevrons of a daffadar, a noncommissioned man. Besides being his military
subordinate, Ranjit Singh was the son of a yeoman-tenant on the King estate, and his ancestors had been
part of the Kings' fighting tail ever since the Exodus, martial-caste jajmani-chents who followed the sahib
into the Peshawar Lancers as a matter of course. That mixture of the feudal and the regimental was
typical of the Empire's military, and it made discipline a very personal thing. Ranjit Singh would obey
without question, as long as the order didn't violate his sense of duty—by letting his sahib go off into the
wilderness without him, for example.
They climbed log steps in the side of the natural levee and strolled up the rutted muddy street
that led from the stretch of river-bank. The Imperial cavalrymen walked with their left hands on the hilts of
their curved tu/war-sabers; besides those they carried long Khyber knives, and holstered six-shot
revolvers, heavy man-killing Webley .455's. Otherwise they were alike in their confident straight-backed
stride with a hint of a horseman's roll to it, and not much else.
Eric King was an inch over six feet, broad-shouldered and long-limbed, with a narrow high-cheeked,
straight-nosed face, glossy dark-brown sideburns and mustache, and hazel eyes flecked with amber. Ranjit
Singh was a-bear to his lord's hunting cat, four inches shorter but thicker in the chest and shoulders, broad