"Basil Wells - New Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Basil)

NEW MOON
by Basil Wells
(Author of "Biped," "Rebirth of Man," etc.)
The barbarian rode out of the wilds to capture one of the little demons whose
eyes flashed fire.



ARIS CX13 perched precariously atop a gleaming white boulder as she watched the
strange rider's approach. A ferocious shaggy gray pack of wolfish grals clawed
futilely at the rock's smooth base, fighting to gorge their gaunt bellies on her
tender flesh.
Her scanty black tunic hung in ribbons, shredded by clawing blanches as she had
raced to escape their keen fangs long hours before, and her long raven hair
streamed unbound down about her shoulders.
Less than two miles away, upon the rocky upper plateau, the dozen dome cities of
her people gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Two miles, or a thousand parsecs
distant--she knew there would be no rescue from that source. Only this morning
Krath GDT8 had announced that she must soon be exiled from the plateau, to live
out her life among the miserable wretches who eked out a precarious existence in
Numark's inner swamplands.
Aris CX13 was an atavistic throwback to some primitive ancestor--a shapely,
beautiful reversion to the ancestral type. She walked, a giantess, among the
scrawny bald men of Numark. They regarded with disgust her graceful rounded
body, and her gleaming white teeth filled them with horror--beastly fangs! But
for her father, kindly old Hed CX12 the scientist, she would have been destroyed
many years before.
Eagerly now Aris watched the rider from beyond the horizon reach the cliff's
tree-clad rim and ride toward her along a narrow game-trail.
She could see now that he was a barbarian, a tall giant of a man, well-muscled
and straight. Here was no shambling hairy outcast! Here was a man!
A great bow of yellow wood thrust above his bronzed shoulder, the polished shaft
of his stout, quartz-tipped spear beside it. At his side a knife of soft,
hammered iron, its handle bound about with shrunken leather bands, swung in its
sheath. He wore no garment save a simple g-string of tanned leather, and clumsy
looking moccasins of zarp-hide were upon his feet. His hair was long--a tawny
yellow--and the flame of his deep-set eyes made startling sparks of blue in the
darkness of his lean features.
He came full upon the grals as he rounded a turn in the trail. He pulled up his
horse and unslung the bow, nocking the bowstring in place with one swift motion.
Then his bow bent; one--two--three the arrows flashed, and three of the
lank-ribbed beasts kicked out their lives on the uneven grassy ground.
The snarling pack melted away before this new deadly foe, seeking shelter among
the jutting rocks and the clumps of brush that sparsely dotted the lower
plateau's grassland. In a moment the last of their shadowy shapes were gone.
Aris slid down from her rough-surfaced seat atop the great rock and was gingerly
rubbing a portion of her bruised anatomy as the stranger rode up beside her.
Aris faced him proudly but the color was high in her cheeks and her heart was
thudding fast. He slid from the muddy gray blanket that did service as his
saddle, not three feet away.