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

No sooner had the Warrows returned than B'arr stepped in through the doorway, with Tchuka and Ruluk behind, the sledmasters having staked their teams. B'arr laughed when Gwylly asked what they would do for firewood, and so, too, did the other two sledmasters when the buccan's query was translated into the Aleuti tongue. As B'arr and Ruluk unwrapped whole frozen salmon and, using hand axes, began hacking the fish into great chunks, Tchuka disappeared outside, returning in a moment with what appeared to be slabs of dirt. To Gwylly's amazement, the sledmaster set these afire.

"Turf," said Aravan, as if that explained all.

At the blank look on Gwylly's face, Riatha added, "Some call it peat. Yet by any name, it burns."

Gwylly shook his head in rumination. "I saw the mound near the stable, but I thoughtЧ"

"Чthat it was just dirt," Faeril finished for him, for it had been her assumption as well. "But I should have known," she admitted, "for I am from the Boskydells, I where there are fields of fireplace turf, near Bigfen and I Littlefen both."

"Hah!" exclaimed B'arr, saying something aside to the other Aleutans that brought smiles to their coppery faces.

Then he turned to Aravan. "No, not firedirt, Anfщ; it is ren m°kk . . . you name, dung. From ren."

Now Aravan laughed. "Fewmets! Deer fewmets! Dried dung. Ah, Sledmaster, thou dost show me the errors of my ways." Great grins crinkled Gwylly's and Faeril's features, for Warrow and Elf alike had been fooled.

Riatha too smiled, fleetingly, then grew somber, distracted, turning her gaze toward the unseen Grimwall. "What appears to some as one thing is oft completely different to the eyes of another, and even then its true nature might not be known, might be something else altogether."

Gwylly stared into the glow of the dung fire, his thoughts miles away. He watched as the writhing white plume of the pungent smoke was borne swirling upward above the wall, where it was shredded by the moaning wind. And the buccan wondered at what else they might encounter that would fool them all, something perhaps deadly in its deception.

B'arr stood, interrupting Gwylly's bodeful thoughts. "Mygga feed span?" he asked, gesturing to a bag of cut salmon, his black eyes glittering.

Gwylly's face lit up, and he bobbed his head. Faeril, too, nodded animatedly.

At this indication from the Mygga, Tchuka and Ruluk grinned widely, their strong teeth showing white against their black beards and moustaches and bronze-like features.

B'arr took up a frozen slab of axe-hacked salmon. "Then wait. I call." And he stepped out into the windblown snow. The other two Aleutans also took a chunk of salmon apiece and followed B'arr outside.

They were each heading to their lead dogs, for as Gwylly, Faeril, Riatha, and Aravan had come to learn since setting forth some twelve days past, some six hundred miles agone, the lead dog of each team was the first to be fed, the last to be harnessed, and the first to be unharnessed. Each was the dominant dog in its team, in its span, and the sledmaster maintained that status by treating the lead dog with the deference that was its due, and by displaying that treatment to all the other dogs in the team.

As B'arr had explained in his broken Pellarion: "Life depend on span. Span depend on lead. Lead depend on sledmaster. I am pack leader, Shlee is span leader. His life in my hands, my life in his. I treat him as leader, he treat me as master. All dog see. All understand. All stay alive All dog. Shlee. Me."

After but a moment or so, B'arr's whistle sounded above the storm. Gwylly, dragging two bags of cut salmon, and Faeril, hauling one, stepped out through the doorway and into the whirling snow. And after a moment there sounded the yipping and yammering of excited dogs.





The storm abated sometime after nightfall, and the Moon rose argent in the clearing sky.

And in the night Faeril awakened to see Riatha standing in the moonlight, her silver gaze turned upward. Faeril, too looked up and out, her sight flying through the open roof. And her heart ran chill. For high in the silent vault above, she could see the Eye of the Hunter, its long, fiery tail streaming across the spangled sky.





Chapter 3
Faeril