"Henry Lion Oldie. Fragments of novels in english translation" - читать интересную книгу автора

Solly's instantaneous stroke. The Mutable praised once more the darkness
of the night. Then he threw away his bladric and changed himself into a
wolf. Wielding the sword wasn't enough for him. He wanted some more than
that. Only then his vengeance would be accomplished.
He burst into the house. There was another door inside. He pushed it
with his paw, and it opened with a creak. The woolf's keen eyes discerned
at once the two figures pressed into the corner and clinging to one
another. There were a girl, almost a child, frail and clumsy, and a boy
about seven whom the girl tried to protect. The boy trembled, terror-
stricken.
They were the children of the man whom Solly has just killed at the
porch.
The moon peered cautiously through a gap in the clouds and lighted
the room through an opened window. The girl saw the woolf's silhouette
and raised her head with a shiver. And Solly clearly saw in her eyes the
familiar anguish.
They were the eyes oa his mother.
It was his father who lay dead at the entrance... It was he himself
who was now choking with terror in the corner behind a unsecure shield of
his sister slender body in a light dress...
Without thinking what he is doind Solly rose to his feet -- his two
human feet -- and stood before the girl, and a timid, improbable hope
linked them. And the moon, astonished, forgot to hide itself in the
clouds.
Solly heared a loud noise, and Rollo burst into the room staggering
as a drunkard. He was in human form, wholly naked, and his sword was
stained with blood. The leopard-man was drunken with blood.
-- Ah, you've found some fun too, haven't you, Solly? -- gasped
Rollo, showing his teeth in rapture.-- Well, let's halve the prey! You
take the girl and the cub is for me. And then we'ii halve them each in
turn, and once more...
He stuck his sword into the floor prepearing to transform into a
leopard, a mad yellow cat, but Solly turned to him, and Rollo looked at
his friend's face -- and understood everything at once.
-- What's up with you, Sol? -- he muttered stepping back to the
door.-- These here... they killed your dad... they crippled your mum...
how can you...
-- They did it,-- Solly's voice was colourless and toneless as the
Morn's.-- Then we do it -- and then it's their turn -- and ours... and
again... Constants or Mutables, both of us are constant only in one thing
-- equally constant...
Solly wanted to stop but he couldn't. The words fell and fell from
his lips, but suddenly Rollo's body tightened and Solly became silent at
once. Fear seized him.
He was afraid not for himself. When a human being he could contend
with Rollo, but Rollo-leopard could easily tear both Solly the man and
Solly the wolf, and after that...
Solly's hand instinctively grasped the hilt of Rollo's sword that
protruded from the floor. At this very moment a growling and grinning
whirlwind rushed at him out of the dark. Solly raised his hand just to