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

Rhom should not complain. Your pack weighs less than a
ninan-old pup.
It's not my pack I'm thinking of, Dion returned. And it would
not be Rhom carrying my pack, but Gamon, since my pack is
lighter and Gamon is older. My brother would be carrying
Aranur' s pack, and that piece of luggage weighs half as much
as you.
The wolf looked at Aranur and her yellow eyes gleamed, but
Dion gave her an admonishing look. Hishn licked her long
teeth instead.
Ten minutes after that, Dion knew they would come upon
Gamon and the others any time. The breeze had not even
dulled the edges of the footprints of the two younger girls, and
Dion carefully crumbled dirt into the prints, then brushed the
marks from the trail with a low-hanging branch. If the light
wind held, the tracks would be gone within half an hour, and
what was left would look as if the wind had brushed the branch
across the path by itself. Hishn told her that the Gray Ones
would chase some deer across the trail after they had passed,
which would hide the faint prints even more, so Dion stepped
carefully across the softer spots in the trail and continued.
Aranur, who waited silently while she cleared the trail, gauged
the sounds in the woods and then followed, cutting his stride to
match hers, while the gray wolf loped ahead.
They had slowed their pace to jog up one last hill when
Hishn stopped suddenly. Dion and Aranur froze, then faded
back into the brush as Hishn raised her head and sniffed the
wind. But it was the image of Dion's brother that the wolf
sent to the healer. Smiling, Dion answered silently, and
Hishn grinned, disappearing into the brush for her promised
hunt.
Dion smiled faintly. "Up there," she said softly to Aranur.
"It's Rhom."
Her brother, as if called by the wolf's warning, got to his
feet at the top of the hill. He smiled as they stepped forward,
though his glance was sharp as it took in the mud on Aranur's
mail. "What took you so long?" he asked, waiting for the two
to climb the hill before leading them into a dip that was hidden
from below.
"Masa." Aranur gestured behind him with his chin. He
nodded a greeting to his uncle, Gamon, as he crested the top of
the dip, then smiled briefly at his sister and the other two
youths.
"Was it bad?" Rhom asked quietly.
"Bad enough," Aranur returned noncommittally, and the
blacksmith, with a glance at the others, nodded without ques-
tioning further. He would ask Dion later what had happened. If
Aranur did not want to mention the masa in front of the girls,
he understood. The young cousins had not grown up in the
forest like Dion and Rhom. Rhom did not want to add more