"Tara K. Harper - Wolfwalker 2 - Shadow Leader" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harper Tara K)

tles. They're nesting under this overhang."
Her voice shook slightly, and Aranur tightened his jaw. For
a climber to be so afraid of heights . . . But this was nothing
compared to what he had seen her do before. He spared only
one more glance at the evergreen canopy before starting up the
rocks. The crack Dion exposed was dirty with roots and rotten
growth, but it was clear enough to follow, and Aranur took as
little time as she did, jamming all his fingers, then just two, and
then one into the smaller and smaller holds. Above him, the
woman leaned out and kicked her right leg up shoulder-level so
that her ankle caught and scraped the moss off the edge of the
ledge that struck out into the air. "Almost clear," she said
under her breath.
She paused a moment, clung with one hand and foot to the
face, and shifted her sword back with the other hand so that the
hilt would not catch. Then she lunged up and over the edge in
one smooth move, grabbing at a tiny crack far above. Her
momentum swung the rest of her body up till she came face-
to-face with the rock. She poised, suspended in time with
Aranur's breath. Her thighs touched the face of that smooth
and threadbare cliff; her body fell back into the air as her
momentum left her. Aranur froze. Could she hold? Time
stopped, as if to give her a chance to find another hold before
she fell. One of her feet crept to the right, her toes crawling
along a ledge that was not even as wide as her fingernail. The
other foot was trembling off a small, triangular spur that stuck
out of the ragged crack to her left. Her right hand was plastered
to the ridge where her little finger drove itself into the tiny,
shallow hold she had lunged for. Her left hand trailed the rock
face with her balance until both caught up with the rest of her.
For an instant, Aranur heard the echo of a silent scream in his
head. Then Dion's harsh breathing smothered her scream, and
Aranur could only imagine he heard her chanting, "It's just
me. Me and the rocks. I'm doing fine . . . "
He eased out from the ledge after her and glanced down at
the forest to see the masa runners. They were stretched out in
confusion as their prey no longer triggered their roots. He took
a deep breath. It was not the narrowness of the ledge that made
it dangerous, or the moss that clogged its holds, but the sheer
smoothness of its face and the masa waiting below. Like Dion,
he was not wearing climbing boots, but instead rough-cut
leather moccasins. And after a ninan of hiking through the
mountains, the leather was so thin he might as well have been
barefoot. It was so loose now that it shifted between his foot
and the rocks and slipped him off the holds. And if he fell, he
reminded himself, the masa would drop on him like a starving
lepa on a sleeping dog.
"Top's clear," Dion called down unevenly from over the
edge.
He nodded without answering. Bracing his left toes in the