"Kate Elliott - Crown of Stars 7 - Crown of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

which, at any rate, the hounds could follow. Dry leaves crackled under his feet and dragged at his hair
and skin. Twigs poked him twice in the eye and prodded his limbs and torso. Sorrow whined, ears flat
and head down, and Rage picked her way with surprising delicacy for such a huge creature, very dainty
as she set down each paw into dying wood rush and the splintered remains of the tree.
The trunk was crowded with branches, a maze to confound the hounds, but the bole was negotiable
at this point, not as big around as the thicker trunk lower down. With his help they scrambled their way
through clumsily. Branches rattled. They were as noisy as an army of blundering farmers lost in the
woodsman's domain.
A sound caught him. A strange croaked cry made his limbs go stiff with apprehension. He heaved
Rage by the scruff past the worst of the inner branches, and there the hounds stood frozen within the
shelter of the branches. They did not bark. A large creature passed by, but they could not see anything
clearly through the screen of leaves and brittle branches, only hear its heavy tread, a snorting
under-cough, the uncoiling disturbance as branches were pressed back and either cracked, or sprang
back with a rattling roar. A smell like iron made him wince. Unbidden, he recalled Iso, the crippled
brother at Hersford Monastery. Had Iso survived the tempest? Did he work there still as a lay brother
under Father Ortulfus' strict but fair rule?
The noise subsided. Sorrow's tail beat twice against branches as he lifted his head, eager to get on,
but neither hound barked nor made the slightest noise. They struggled out of the branches and Alain beat
a way back to the path. About a hundred strides ahead he found the ground disturbed as at the wake of
a monster pressing through the forest. He knelt beside a scar freshly cut into the ground by claws as long
as his forearm and traced the curve of the imprint.
 "A guivre," he said to the hounds. What they heard in his voice he did not know, but they whined
and, flattening their ears, ducked their heads submissively.
Sorrow sniffed along the trail left by the creature and padded into the forest, back the way it had
come. Rage followed. They vanished quickly, moving fast, and Alain went after them but soon fell
behind. He found them several hundred paces off the path, nosing the carcass of a half eaten deer. Like
him, they had eaten sparsely on their journey, dependent on what they could hunt in the woodland and
beg in whatever villages and farmsteads they passed through. Now, they tore into the remains. He sat on
a fallen tree and gnawed on the last of his bread and cheese. He trimmed mold from the cheese with his
knife and contemplated the buds on the standing beech. Frost had coated every surface at dawn, and he
still felt its sharp breath on his cheek although it was late spring and late afternoon. The cold chafed his
hands. An ache wore at his throat, as if he were always about to succumb to a grippe but never quite
managed to. The trees had not yet leafed out, although they ought to be bursting with green at this time of
year. A spit of rain brushed over them and was gone. Its whisper moved away through the forest.
At first hidden by the rustling of branches and forest litter stirred by raindrops, another sound took
shape within the trees. The hounds were so hungry that they cracked bones and gulped flesh and took no
notice, but at the moment he realized he heard a group of men, they growled and lifted their massive
heads to glare down the trail, back the way the monster had come from originally. He walked over to
stand beside them with staff in hand, listening.
"Hush, you fool! What if it hears your nattering?"
"We thunder like a herd of cattle as it is. We'll never sneak up on anything."
"Ho! Watch that shovel. You almost stove in my head."
"You should go in the lead, Atto. You've got the good spear."
"Won't! I never wanted to come at all. This is a stupid idea! We'll all be devoured and to no
purpose."
"Shut up."
He saw the men in the distance past fallen trees and shattered branches. They had not yet noticed
him, so he whistled to get their attention and called out before they could react in a reckless way that
might cause someone harm.
"I'm here," he said, "a traveler. The creature you seek passed by some time ago. I and my hounds