"Dave Luckett - The Girl The Apprentice And The Dogs Of Iron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Luckett Dave)

the roots of the thicket where she crouched. The first houses of the village were a good four hundred
paces away down the slope, but she heard the animals that the Clumsy Ones kept: the sleepy clucking of
fowls, the bleating of sheep in the folds. Beyond, where the sloping land funneled down the valley to meet
a dark line that cut off the winter stars, she could hear the drop and wash of the sea.

Eriseth gripped her bow a little tighter. She was frightened, she realized. She told herself that it was silly,
that the forest was the same here as in her Home Grove. Still the feeling stayed. Something was watching
her. She shook herself. Nonsense. It was just the open ground.

The trees of this last patch of woods ended here, a sudden stop as though a line had been drawn across
the hill. Beyond were the cleared and plowed fields of the Clumsy Ones. They lay bare under the cold
moon, frost riming the furrows. The forest that was Eriseth's homeтАФher protector, and the provider for
her peopleтАФwas behind her, a hundred leagues of trees in numbers beyond counting. Eriseth's people,
the Eldra, knew them all.

And now she had to leave the trees behind. Never before had she been out of their shelter. She had
made this last stage of her journey at night, crossing the outlying fields and pastures with caution, and now
she studied the open ground before her uneasily. Open ground, all bare beneath the stars, was exposed
and dangerous. The Eldra avoided such placesтАФfor land which did not support trees did not support the
Eldra, either.

But there was no choice now. Eriseth had come to the village of the Clumsy Ones alone, with a letter to
deliver to a person she had never seen. The letter was a square of squirrel parchment, the writing burned
in with a glowing needle, the square folded and sealed with beeswax. She touched her fingers to it where
it was tucked safely under her left arm. The name on the parchment was one she had never heard before,
but it was a good name, a noble nameтАФSerenir, The Pole Star, as the Clumsy Ones would call it. The
letter was for him. He was a magic worker.

He, thought Eriseth, in wonder. A magic worker, and a man. Arwenna, the Wisewoman who had written
the letter, had told her that men worked magic, among the Clumsy Ones. Among the Eldra only women
had magic, and they did not work it. It was part of them. You might as well say that they worked at
breathing, or at standing up, or at singing. People who had to work at something couldn't be much good
at it, thought Eriseth.

She sighed. Well, she wasn't. She had no magic at all, it seemed. The Clumsy Ones were her last chance.
She might learn their ways. Their work.

The Clumsy Ones were great workers. Eriseth looked down the moonlit slope at the open fields they had
made from the forest. She disliked the sight. The Eldra never felled a tree. The forest was their homeтАФit
would be like hacking down their own doorposts. But the Clumsy Ones cleared the forest, plowed the
ground and planted crops. Eriseth shuddered. The Clumsy Ones could work, all right, but they made of
the earth a thing to be used, with iron axes to scrape it bare and iron plowshares to scar it, so it might
grow the captive crops that were their food.

And Eriseth had to go to them. She glanced upwards at the moon and knew that dawn was not far off.
Sighing, she started down the slope towards the houses, slinging her bow over her shoulder.

She had gone into the waning moonlight, her small figure smaller still with distance, when another hooded
shadow parted from the darkness under the trees. It watched her, peering about, uneasy, just as she had
been. Like part of the darkness it waited, and then it followed her, silent as smoke, down the slope