"Mercedes Lackey - Flights of Fantasy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

of luck, he might even get a seal.
He traveled cautiously, moving mostly in the early mornings and hiding during
the brightest hours of the day. When he lived on the farm, they had always
gone eastward up the coast for fishing, so he made his way to the west. Moving
along the edge of the cliffs one morning, he heard a distant barking, and
looking down, he saw a scattering of brown-furred bodies basking upon the
sands of a small cove.
He stared at the rumble of rock where part of the cliff had slid away,
wondering if he could get down. Then a call from overhead brought his gaze
upward to the circling black shape in the sky.
"Are you telling me I can make it, or do you just hope for more food?" Despite
their companionship, he did not suppose the ravens would care whether they
feasted on the carcass of a seal or his own. Nonetheless, he chose to take the
bird's arrival as an omen, and with spear strapped to his back, he began the
difficult descent to the shore.
By the time he reached the moraine at the bottom of the cliff, Bui was
scratched in a dozen places. As he sat down on a rock to catch his breath, he
heard a familiar "swoosh" of wings.
The raven braked, banked, and settled on an outcrop of basalt, where it sat
preening its wings and surveying Bui with a distinctly humorous gleam in its
black eyes. He saw without surprise that it was the young bird with the white
spot on its tail.
In the first days of his exile, Bui had wondered if isolation would lead to
madness. It was the ravens that had saved him from it, unless he was crazy to
think their response to him the act of an intelligent will. The ravens
belonged to Odin; the god was watching over him through their eyes, and he
could reassure himself that when he talked to them, he was speak-
ing to the god.
"Are you laughing at this clumsy human?" he asked, inspecting his bruises.
"You're right. It would be a lot easier to get down here if I were a bird. But
you can't kill a seal!"
Bui wondered if he could. Seals were accustomed to human hunters, and wary,
but perhaps he no longer smelled like a man after three moons spent in the
wild. Nonetheless, he stayed hidden for a day, observing, before he made his
move, clambering down to hide among the rocks while the beasts were at
sea, and waiting until they had settled down to bask in the autumn sunlight
before rising with poised spear.
The seal Bui had selected was young, without a thick a layer of fat to get
through. He focused on the spot between the shoulderblades and drove downward
with all his strength, knowing, even as the honed blade struck, that his aim
was
true. Feeling its death, the seal reared up beneath him. Bui hung on with all
his strength, knowing he must not allow the wounded animal to reach the sea,
and even with the boy's weight to anchor it, the seal managed to reach the
edge of the water before it died.
It was fortunate, reflected Bui as the world stopped spinning around him, that
it was just past high tide, for he knew he did not have the strength to haul
the carcass back up the beach. He slit the animal's throat, and as the blood
drained into the sea, the raven spiraled upward, its exultant yelling
interspersed by ear-splitting trills.