"Patrick Tilley - Amtrak 1 - Cloud Warrior" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)

As Mr Snow rippled his fingers up the length of both arms to describe
how, in the War, the falling Suns had burned the flesh from every
living thing, Cadillac stood up and walked away down the slope towards
the settlement.

The morning sun warmed his bare back and cast a slim, broad-shouldered
shadow in front of him.

Cadillac took a deep breath to fill out his chest, stretched his arms
out sideways then brought them together above his head.

His shadow did the same.

It never failed to fascinate Cadillac. The shape of his shadow pleased
him. It was different from the shadows cast by most of the others in
his clan. It had a sleek, smooth outline, with long straight arms and
legs, and the shadow's hands had only one thumb and four fingers - like
the shadows of the sand-burrowers that Cadillac had never seen but whom
Mr Snow had described.

The hidden enemy far to the south by the Great Water who sent out the
iron snakes and the cloud warriors -' from whom he must always flee.

Cadillac M'CalI, now eighteen years old, belonged to one of the many
clans of She-Kargo Mutes that roamed the Central and Northern Plains.

According to Mr Snow, their ancestors had come from beyond the dawn on
the backs of giant birds whose beating wings made the noise of a mighty
waterfall.

They had landed at a place called O-haya, by the side of a great
lake.

To celebrate their arrival, they had killed and roasted the birds and
feasted on them all summer long then, when winter came, they used the
frozen waters of the lake to build a great settlement full of towering
pillars of ice that glowed with all the colours of the rainbow and
whose tops were lost in the clouds.

In the War of a Thousand Suns, the city had melted and flowed back into
the lake.. Every living thing had perished except for an old man
called She-Kargo and an old woman called Me-Sheegun and their
children.

She-Kargo had fifteen sons, all of them brave warriors, tall and strong
as bears; the old woman had fifteen beautiful daughters.

She-Kargo's sons and Me-Sheegun's daughters crossed wrists and bound
their bodies together with the blood kiss and their children, and their
children's children, grew strong and multiplied, and moved westwards