"Dexter-HerdingInstinct" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dexter Colin)

From the shore, Mai watched the white chunks of ice bobbing in the black water,
scattering and milling, separated from one another. That was wrong, should not
be. She barked at the white shapes, but they did not heed her.

No wayward sheep had ever successfully defied Mai's mother. Mai was --blue eyes
or not -- her mother's true daughter. She lowered her head, stretched her neck
out, and stalked in a half-crouch toward the fractious river. She speared the
nearest ice chunk with her winter-blue gaze. She did not growl, nor bare a fang,
but with her whole posture she threatened the disordered flock of ice floes.

A small block -- which had been sweeping toward the gravelly shore -shuddered to
a sudden halt. Another block bumped it, jammed against it, was also halted. In
an instant more the whole surface of the fiver had done likewise, as the
reaction spread from one shore to the other. The ice was smooth and flat no
longer, and there remained a gap or two, through which running black water could
be glimpsed -- but most of the flow was covered by piled-up chunks of ice, held
in their places by Mai's commanding sheepdog stare.

Corlinn looked wide-eyed at the scene. Mai waved her white-tipped tail once --
not at him, but in signal to the opposite shore. And an insubstantial white
figure set a hesitant foot upon the nearest block.

Apparently the rough surface was solid enough. The wraith flitted across, quick
as a breeze, almost as difficult to make out. It passed within a yard of Mai,
who shook her fur and let all the ice go skittering on its way, in a second,
smaller flood of released water. Leaping back from the slopping bank, the dog
pointed her long nose toward the nearer woods, a little way downstream.

Corlinn looked that way too -- and the hair rose prickling on the nape of his
neck. A second pale wraith stood among the bare tree trunks, where he had never
seen a sign of one ere this. A thicker white form, with a suggestion -- faint
and best seen out of the comer of the eye, hard to make out dead-on -- of a
shield and a sword. A soldier, dead in some long ago battle.

Dead, and unable to wed his sweetheart, or claim his child. Separated from them
forever by running water. . .

As Corlinn stared, the slender white form rushed toward the heavier one, was
enfolded in it. Just for an instant, the little flock was gathered all together,
as it should be. Then, 'twas gone. The sun ate through the fog, and the river
water began to sparkle, the white ice became impossible to gaze upon. His eyes
watered.

Mai came romping out of the dazzle, unseen, and leaped up to plant her paws on
Corlinn's shoulders. She did stink of dead fish -- Corlinn found he did not
care. He hugged her tight to him. Mai wriggled to be free of his grip, but her
warm tongue found his cheek, twice.

"Sometimes a blue-eyed dog is just a blue-eyed dog," the wizard recalled,
grunting as the dog poked her overlong nose into his left armpit, trying to