《Lord of thunder》作者： - Andre Norton 【EPUB】

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Andre Norton - Lord Of Thunder Copyright 1962 CHAPTER ONE Red ridges of mountains rusted even more by the first sere breath of the Big Dry cut across the lavender sky of Arzor north and east. At an hour past dawn dehydrating puffs of breeze warned of the new days scorching heat. There would be two hours-maybe three yet-during which a man could ride though in growing discomfort. Then he must lie up through the blistering fire of midday. The line camp was not too far ahead. Hosteen Storms silent communication with the powerful young stallion under him sent the horse trotting at a steady pace striking out over a strip of range where yellow grass waved high enough to brush a riders leg. Here and there Storm spied a moving blot of blue the outer fringe of the grazing frawn herd. His sense of direction had not failed him when he took this short cut they were nearing the river. In the Big Dry no animal strayed more than half a days distance from a sure supply of water. But he had come close to the edge of prudence in staying so long in the hills this time. One of the two canteens linked to his light saddle pad was as dry as the sun-baked rocks at his back had been so since midmorning of the day before and the other held no more than a good cup and a half of water. The Norbies those wide-ranging hunters native to this frontier world had their springs back in the mountain canyons but their locations were clan secrets. Perhaps here and there an off-world settler would be accepted by a clan to the point of sharing water knowledge. Logan might-Hosteens well-marked black brows pulled in a fleeting frown as he thought of his Arzoran-born half-brother. When Hosteen had landed on Arzor a half planet-year earlier a veteran of the Confederacy forces after the Xik war it was as a homeless exile. The last battle of that galaxy-wide holocaust had been a punitive raid to turn Terra into a blue radioactive cinder. He had had no idea then that Logan Quade existed or that Brad Quade-Logans father-could be any more to him than a man he had once sworn to kill. In the end the hate-twisted oath demanded of him by his grandfather on Terra had not made Storm a murderer after all. It had been broken just in time and had led him to what he needed most-new roots a home kin. Only happy endings did not always remain so Hosteen knew now. His emotion was more one of exasperation than disappointment. Though he had appeared to drop into a place already prepared to contain him as easily as his vanished Navajo kinsmen used to fit a polished turquoise into a silver setting yet another stone in that same setting had come loose during the past few months To most riders the daily round of duties on a frontier holding were arduous enough. There were the dangerous reptilian yoris to hunt down raiders from the wild Nitra tribe of the Peaks to keep off a hundred and one other tangles with disaster or even sudden death to be faced. But none of that