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

Pounding hoofbeats marked time for her, growing louder, growing closer. Kelyn moved to the strong
fire, hand hovering until she spotted and snatched the coolest end of a burning limb, and then dashed
outside with it, running around the house to light the entire lower edge of the thatch without even sparing a
glance at the waiting pyre. A signal fire was her only chance to call for help, and she'd be damned to a
Silogan hell-cave before she used her mother's glory, her pyre. A glance at the galloping, whooping
looters told her she didn't have the time, but she ran back inside the house anyway, scooped up her
mother's bundled, stiffening body, and carried it as carefully as possible to the pyreтАФthough she had no
time to get Lytha up on the frame, oh no, the looters were circling the house now, looping around the
pyre and plowing through the dried stalks from last summer's garden. Kelyn made one last, desperate
dive for the house as the looters mocked her, circling closer, mimicking the fear they were sure they saw.

They saw wrong.

As her hand closed around the staff leaning up beside the doorway, her concentrated frown turned into a
fierce grin. Tugging the tie that released her cloak, she kicked it away so she couldn't trip in it, and turned
to face the lootersтАФwho by now were whooping with anticipation as well, for the first time able to see
that the tall, lithe young body before them offered as much as the house.

Then they saw the look on her face. For a moment, in silent accord, they halted, cruelly pulling up their
horses to regard her. The wind died. Behind her, Kelyn felt the feeble heat of the strengthening flames
eating at her house; before her, the four men stared at her, not sure what to do with her.

Abruptly, they grinned at one another, pleased with their anticipated take. Pointing at her defiant stance,
they broke into laughter. Kelyn stood her ground, vowing to ram her staff so far down each of those
throats she'd see it come out the other end. As the laughter died into silence and the only sound was the
snorting of the horses and the building crackle of flame, the men exchanged a glance, their unbound hair
whipping in the sudden return of the wind.

Finally one man dismounted, throwing the reins to his companion. Sword out but at his side, he walked
toward her, extending his hand in a peremptory gesture, waiting for acquiescence.

Kelyn lifted a lip in silent disdain, as eloquent as any poet.

The man stopped short, surprise quickly turning to annoyanceтАФbut not as fast as Kelyn went from
defender to attacker. Shifting her hands down on the staff, pivoting around one foot, she loosed her hunt
cry into the midst of them, bringing the staff around to slam into the man's arm at the elbow. She couldn't
hear the cracking bone above her own cry, but white bone ripped clear of the shirt. As the man
screamed she reversed her direction and grip and felt the solid blow of the other end of the staff just
below his ear.
 His body wobbled, then fell. Kelyn leapt for his sword, unfamiliar as it was, and crouched over him, staff
in one hand and his sword in the other, her back still to the flaming house.

"Barbarian bitch!" one of the men shouted at her, the first intelligible words from any of them and heavily
accented at that. She spat at him, and they didn't take it any more lightly just because the wind caught it
and the spittle landed on her chin. They attacked, rushing her one after the other, trying to draw her off
balance with the charging intimidation of barely controlled horses. Her staff became her shield, wielded
one-handed and as often as not almost torn from her grip. The sword, badly balanced and as odd to her
hand as a one-ended staff, nonetheless managed to cut flesh, scoring on the leg of one man, wounding the
horse of another.