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

towards the village. Even the dogs heard nothing, and it was as if the starlight flowed around and missed
it.
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On winter mornings, Loys Wildwood rose before the sun to fire up his forge. It would need to burn for
an hour before it was fit to work iron, and the daylight would be short and gray. He had to make use of
such hours of light as he had. Normally, the fire would be a job for an apprentice, not the master smith,
but Loys had no apprentice. And, in truth, he enjoyed this hour before the rising of the sun: the bite of the
crisp, cold air and the slow warming of the forge in the red glow.

He was working the bellows, watching the play of the flames, and thinking of the day's work. Rough iron
billets were stacked by the wall, delivered yesterday from the ship that was still tied up to the pier at the
bottom of the single village street. It might be best to begin the day by working some of the billets into bar
iron. Then there were tools to be reforged. Already farmers were bringing in their spades and hoes to be
repaired, ready for the work of ditching that would be needed with the thaw. Spring was not far away.
Soon he would be making plowshares for the spring plowing...

The door creaked.

Loys knew at once that it was no farmer, no trader. No fisher, either. Those people rose early, but their
footsteps were clear and open, careless. This caller's feet made no sound he could hear. In this last hour
of the night, it was sometimes best not to question the folk that went abroad, and Loys knew that. He
was no worker of magic himself, for he had no talent in that direction and his trade was with cold iron,
but he knew what magic was.

"Welcome," he said, not turning around. "A cold morning. Warm yourself at my fire."

Now, there is magic and there is magic. Loys knew no spells, no chants, no runes or powers or charms.
But was it by accident that he had used the polite greeting that the Eldra used themselves, between
hunters chancemet in the forest?

Still there were no footsteps, and the waft of his visitor's passage was slight, so little that it could not be
heard under the huff of the bellows. But there was a dark movement at the limit of his sight where the
bench ran along the wall, and Loys turned his head away, again polite by the measure of the Eldra, not to
look directly at his visitor.

Nor does one question a guest. Loys raked his fire into a mound of glowing charcoal and placed a
pannikin of water on it. A cup of tansy tea would give heart to the raw morning. Only when it was made,
the fragrant steam scenting the warm firelight of the forge, did he turn to offer it.

He was a man of easy ways, Loys Wildwood, the smith of Smallhaven, and gentle, for all his size and
strength. One way and another, he had seen much in his life already. So in the first place he recognized
his caller's kind, and in the second place he did not start and look uneasy. He offered the tea, speaking
gently, and was not surprised that it was at first politely refused and then gratefully accepted, for this, too,
was courtesy.

You might have taken her, perhaps, for a small girl in a hooded cape, gray-green goatswool as it had
come from the fleece. Indeed, she was young for the EldraтАФabout the same as a ten-year-old among
the Clumsy Ones, though she might have had many more years than that. The Eldra lived long lives, those
of them that saw out their span.