"Mithgar - 01 - Eye Of The Hunter" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKiernan Dennis L)

"Yah! Yah!" called the sledmaster, urging the dog onward, Shlee in the lead, maintaining the pace.

Gwylly leaned out and squinted past Faeril sitting before him. How can they see where to run?

Snow blew horizontally across their direction of travel and Gwylly's vision ahead was baffled by the storm. He could see all the dogs, swift and true, tails straight out ears laid back and flat, running hard against their tug line fastened to the gang; but ten yards or so beyond Shlee Gwylly could make out nothing but whirling white. Glancing back, the Warrow could see Laska, lead dog of the team behind, and he could barely see Riatha's sled gliding after; but of the third team, the one hauling Aravan, there was no sign, although now and again he could hear the crack! of Tchuka's signal whip.

Leaning forward, he called out to Faeril above the stead; shssh of the runners. "The dogsЧI hope they know when they are going."

Behind, B'arr, the sledmaster, laughed, a sharp bark "Shlee know, little ones. Shlee know."

Both Gwylly and Faeril twisted about in the sled basket to look back at the Aleutan's smiling face, with its bronze features and dark eyes and straight black hair and moustache and beard. The sledmaster was dressed in a fur-lined parka with matching breeks and mukluks, his mitten-gloved hands firmly gripping the hide-wrapped handlebar, his feet well-planted on the sled runners.

In turn, the Aleutan saw before him two beings of ancient legend, dressed in quilted down: Mygga he had named them, though they called themselves Warrows. A small, slender folk, with tilted, jewel-like eyes, and pointed ears, and a ready smileЧeyes and ears and pale skin much like that of the Fщ, the "Elves," in the sleds behind. But unlike the Fщ, the Mygga were small, child size, no bigger than six- or seven-year-old Aleutan children, standing as they did somewhere between three and three and a half feet tall, with the male Mygga, Gwylly, being slightly larger than the female, Faeril; why, they were barely taller than Rak or Kano, B'arr's great power dogs at the back of the team.

The Fщ, the Elves, on the other hand, with their tilted eyes and pointed ears, stood slightly taller than an adult Aleutan, perhaps five foot five or six for the female, Riatha, with the male, Aravan, a hand or so higher.

But no matter their height, both Mygga and Fщ, they were proud, like Chieftains, standing erect and walking with purpose and looking you straight in the eye, as if they owned the world.

And they were dangerous, with weapons of steel and silver and starlight and crystal:

The Warrows, the Mygga, bore missile weapons: The Myggan female was armed with two belts of throwing knives crisscrossed over her torso, five steel blades to a belt, ten steel knives in all; but there was more, for one belt held a silver bladeЧyet, strangely, on the other belt was an empty scabbard where the silver one's mate should have been. The Myggan male, too, bore a dagger, yet his weapon of choice seemed to be a sling, and he carried two pouches of bullets at his waist: one filled with steel spheroids, the other, smaller one with bullets more precious, bullets of silver.

On the other hand, the Elves, the Fщ, bore weapons suited to close combat: The Fщan female was girted with a long-knife and with a splendid sword whose blade glittered like starlight. The Fщan male also wore a long-knife at his waist, yet the long-knife seemed insignificant when compared to his black-hafted spear with its marvelous crystal blade.

But it was not only the features and bearing and stature and weaponry of the Mygga and the Fщ that told the Aleutan these were folk of legend, for even more telling was that the dogs allowed these strangers, these strangers, to approach and pet them, ruffle their fur, fawn over themЧ even Rak and Kano, feral savages that they were, even haughty Shlee. The same was true of Ruluk's and Tchuka'sj teams, with their leads, Laska and Garr, and with their! power dogs, Chenk and Darga and Kor and Chun, and with all the others, too. Yipping and yammering in excitement whenever the Fщ and Mygga came near. Rolling on the! ground. Nuzzling. Bouncing. Dropping down on their forelegs, inviting play. Savages acting like puppies! Aye, these: were the folk of legends told by the lore tellers while gathered 'round the fires; of that, there was no doubt.

"Yah, yah!"

Onward hammered the team through the storm, the sled shsshing after.

Faeril looked at Gwylly, her gaze of amber capturing his of emerald. "Shlee knows," she said, smiling, glancing up at B'arr and then back to Gwylly. "Shlee knows." Then the damman turned to face front once more.

Out before her ran nineteen dogs, two by two, except for Shlee alone in the lead, the dogs of each pair running on opposite sides of the tow line, each fastened to that gang line by their individual tug lines. Had Faeril measured, she would have found that the team was evenly spread out over a distance of nearly eighty feet from the first dog to the last, giving them room to run, and Faeril could see at most ten yards beyond the lead dog ere her vision gave out. Hence she knew that if the eyesight of Shlee in the lead was like her own, then the dog could be seeing no more than thirty or forty yards beyond into the storm, and the wee damman wondered what would happen should there be a crevasse in the way?





They came to the old stone ring atop the low hill within a half hour, Shlee somehow finding it in spite of the storm, Ruluk's sled with Laska in the lead, and Tchuka's with Garr, running in on their heels. Still the snow blew and swirled in the moaning wind, and the stone wall of the ruin was but a vague darkness on the crown of the tor.

And as the Aleutans separated the three teams a distance from one another, and began driving widely spaced individual stakes into the frozen ground and tying a dog to each Gwylly and Faeril were joined by Riatha and Aravan, and they began unloading the sleds, carrying goods through the blow and into the tumbled remains of a small round building, the ruin open to the sky, snow swirling in.

Her voice nearly lost under the groan of the windЧ" 'Tis from the eld days," murmured Riatha, setting down her burden, the golden-haired Elfess running her hand over the stone, her silver-grey eyes gazing hither and yon, her head turning this way and that, as if seeking unseen sights and listening for unheard voices.

"A watchpost, I would say," responded Aravan, placing his bundle next to Riatha's, the Lian Elf slender and dark, his hair as black as a raven's wing, his eyes deep blue, as were those of other Elves of his kindred.