"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 5 - Icefalcons Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Knowing some of the speculators who operated in the Keep, Linok had probably already been offered
the little animal's weight in gold, which was cheap these days, since it would neither hold an edge nor
stand up to the heat of a cook fire. It was just possible that someone would make an attempt to steal the
creature, though with so few animals in the Keep, such a theft would be difficult to hide.
It occurred to him that he could have killed both the old man and the woman and sold the donkey himself
to the highest bidder, always supposing anyone in the Keep possessed anything he wanted that badly.
None of the Talking Stars People were particularly interested in things they couldn't carry two hundred
miles on foot. The habits of the Icefalcon's upbringing died hard.
Gnift the Swordmaster came in, calling together his afternoon practice, and now that her son Mithrys was
able to walk-and learning to talk, may their Ancestors help them all-Gil had returned to training regularly
with the Guards and taking her turn on the watches.
While she and the others were stripping to their undertunics and wrapping their hands and wrists, the
Icefalcon again put on the soft jerkin of black-dyed wolf-hide he wore on patrol, marked with the white
quatrefoil emblem of the Guards of Gae, and pulled on over it a heavier vest, and his gloves.
Though it was April, in these high valleys the wind blew cold, colder now every year. There was still
chance of snow.
Janus, the stocky, red-haired Commander, called out, "You're not on now, you know," and the Icefalcon
shrugged.
"I'm just going up the Vale to see about those bandits."
"There can't be a lot of them." He straightened up from lacing his boots. "The watchers at the Tall Gates
never saw them. Neither have any of the patrols."
"Even so." He gathered up his bow, a blanket, a quiver of arrows, and then, because he had been raised
among the Talking Stars People, added to the sword and water bottle at his belt a leather wallet of dried
meat and flatbread, enough for a hard day's walking, and some dried fruit. Like most of the Guards he
carried a firepouch at his belt, the whole cured hide of a woodchuck lined with horn and clay, in which
was packed a smolder of rotted yellow birch that would burn for a day.
There were few enough guards, and Renweth Vale stretched eighteen miles from the sapphire wall of the
St. Prathhes' Glacier down to the spruce forest at its lower end. A fairly large force might hide in the
pinewoods or the rock caves above, and it was not impossible they could have come in over the
ice-crowned spine of the peaks, rather than the eastward pass.
It would be as well to know where they were and what they were up to. The regular patrol had departed
only an hour before the Icefalcon briefly considered rounding up a band to go with him, then dismissed
the thought. On simple reconnaissance, he would do better alone.
Besides, he thought-the reasoning of a White Raider, Ingold would tell him, but he was a White Raider,
and the reasoning was logical-bandits might have weapons and horses that could be appropriated.
Instinct made him seek the trees as quickly as he could. From the stones called the Four Ladies at the
glacier's foot one could see all the clear land of the Vale. He worked his way carefully under cover of the
woods up to the round meadow where Linok and Hethya had camped.
He did not seriously think that anyone was watching from the Four Ladies, but there was no point in
giving anyone a hint of his movements or intentions.
He had not seen tracks of bandits yesterday, he thought, nor the day before. The watchers on the Tall
Gates that guarded the lower pass to the east had not sighted them, either.
Odd.
From the edge of the trees he scanned the pale sky northward, orienting himself. His upbringing in the
Real World had taught him to learn every facet of his surroundings, tree by tree, gully by gully, mudflat,
spring, and stone. He knew Renweth Vale as well as he knew the ranges of his childhood, the Haunted
Mountains and the Night River Country.
Had the sky-shadowing devil-birds of legend carried him off and set him down anywhere in the range of
the Talking Stars People, he would have been able to determine where he was, where the nearest cover
lay, where to find water and in what direction to walk to come to the steadings and horse herds of his