"Tara K. Harper - Wolfwalker 5 - Silver Moons, Black Steel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harper Tara K)

now dusted with the first light snow of summerтАЩs end. The ground was hard
and slick along the smooth ruts, and halfway across the outer field, she
paused, closed her eyes, and listened. The late-summer clouds filtered the
sky between the ragged peaks. The wind was bitter, and behind her, the
gray expanse swallowed the thin village smoke trails like barren thoughts.
She could hear the wolves clearly now. They curled around her mind,
tasting her thoughts, drawn to her even though she did not Call. She waited.
The wickedly barbed barrier hedge was thick, but it would not stop the
Gray Ones. They would come through the S-curved channels like sly men,
undaunted by the odors that repelled other predators like worlags and
poolah and broo. To her left, the chunko birds called sharply, and she knew
the Gray Ones were just on the other side. Then two of the wolves trotted
silently out from the hedge, and slunk through the rails to the field.
Wolfwalker! The mental call of the wild ones was almost abrasive. Three
other wolves threaded in, and Dion felt herself smiling. There was no
danger to the corralled livestock near the town. Unlike badgerbears and
worlags, wolves rarely bothered a healthy herd, and never did so when the
herd was fenced. That, and the fact that the wolves ate the field rats and
mice made them friends, not enemies of farmers. Yet even with easy field
pickings, the wolves rarely penetrated the barbed hedges. The packs
preferred the less-cultured, more isolated forests. They were engineered to

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Silver Moons, Black SteelтАФHarper, Tara K - Wolf 05


bond to humans, but they were still wild animals, and most humanity
unsettled them. The presence of a wolf near the village could mean only
one of three things: a sick animal in the herd, a wolfwalker nearby, or a
Calling that men must Answer.
DionтАЩs smile grew at the invitation to hunt, and the sense of her expression
transmitted automatically to the wolves who listened to her mind. The Gray
Ones did not hear her specific words, but rather received an impression of
what she sent. Over time, they had learned to interpret her human thoughts
in lupine terms. In turn, she had learned to focus her own thoughts so that
they were more easily read, and to translate the gray senses to human
images and concepts. It had been fifteen years since she bonded with the
wolves. She heard them now like family.
A gray-and-white female gulped a mouse and prowled for another scent. A
young male snuffed at a mole hole. The old male with the darker haunches
lifted his head and stared across the field. Come, he sent. Run with us.
Too close to the wolves, Batayon had said. But she felt her legs tense to
answer.
WolfwalkerwolfwalkerтАж The voice of the dead echoed softly. It was an
offering from the Gray Ones, an answering of the need she unconsciously
projected.
Dion shivered and stared blindly back. They would take her into their
memories if she wanted, back to the deaths, the graves, the blood on her
hands. Any wolfwalker could follow those threads, could see what went on
in the past, could hear again the voices of those long gone. That was a