"Doranna Durgin - Wolverine's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durgin Doranna)

sharply aimed jibes. Frykla hung back, as though she had something to say, but in the end remained silent
and trailed the others back to the fire.

Kelyn settled back into the moss-filled hollow she'd been sleeping in, her face burning and her fingers not
quite ready to release their light grip on the staff beside her. The boys' stupid attempt to fondle her upset
her far less than the pointedly public reminder that she could never forget herself, never be less than
perfectly aware of what she was doing, no matter how distracted, or she'd pay a price for itтАФusually out
of her own skin.

It was a message to her, as well, that things were changing in her life, a reinforcement of the thoughts
she'd put herself to sleep withтАФfar more than her usual final review of her staff's location and the
defensive points of her chosen position, both of which Mungo and Iden should have considered before
they started their stupid game.

Earlier, she'd settled into the mossy spot, secure in her perch despite the fact that an arm's length away,
the massive granite outcrop fell away in a precipitous drop, long enough that the sparse treetops below
looked like mere puffs of green and were not visible at all in the dusk. Such were the mountains of
Ketura; it was what she knew. Besides, with her belly full of roasted rockrabbit and sweet roots baked
to mushiness, there was little to do but think contented thoughts in a cushion of moss and darkness.

But contentment had refused to come. Not far from her, her foster cousins still sat around the fire,
making it spark and crackle by tossing in bits of fat and bone. Waste of good food, Kelyn called it, but
their first hunt of the season had gone so well that they certainly had plenty. She hoped it was a good
omen for the summer to come, and especially for her annual harvest of rare mountain plants.

Usually Kelyn and her mother Lytha dried and sold the precious herbsтАФsome were medicinal, some
offered delicate seasoning for the most sophisticated paletteтАФto the Orrickian traders that veered
toward their tiny village at the end of each summer. This year, Kelyn thought they would set aside the
larger portion for Lytha's use, for her mother had fallen ill over the winter and had never quite come out
of it.

One of the boys at the fire made a loud comment, and the others responded with raucous jeers. Kelyn
made a face at them through the darkness. Since she'd been old enough to walk any distance, she and
her foster cousinsтАФall boys, except for Frykla, who was several years younger than KelynтАФhad been
taking this summer trip into the mountains, going deeper and deeper each season, honing skills of survival
common to none outside the beasts of deep Ketura. By the time they'd started the growth spurts of
adolescence, they knew each other well despite the sometimes long absences over winter, and were
bound together by the extremities of life and death in an unforgiving land.
 Twice the group had returned home smaller than it had left. Kelyn had watched her best friend Sigre
plunge to her death after setting a careless foot on a crumbling trail, and seen young Fiacre die under the
vicious claws of a giant snow panther, his guts trailing the story through the late spring snow of a high
peak. Kelyn herself had touched death several times, and to the wonderment of all had prevailed. For
Kelyn was, she had to admit even to herself, prone to awkwardness and the worst of luck. She stumbled
on clear paths and barked her shoulders on widely spaced trees; she bore more scars than any of her
peers. She'd never handled a sword because her mother was afraid she'd cut off her own foot, she had
to practice hunting skills more often than any of her peers, and all of the stunted trees around the village
bore the marks of her Reman ironwood staff. What took nonchalant competence for her friends often
took fierce concentration on her part, and it seemed all the more notable when Lytha told herтАФand the
othersтАФstories of Kelyn's warrior father.Thainn . Kelyn had heard far too much of Thainn for a man
she'd never even seen.Thainn the Wolverine . The man who'd left Ketura young and blazed through the