"Wen Spencer - Tinker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)

intelligence and movement to the construct.
And she had to try something quick, before the pseudo-warg killed Windwolf.
She ran twenty feet to a pile of sucker poles brought in last year from a well salvage job.
They were fifteen feet long, but only two inches thick, making them light but awkward. More
importantly, they were at hand. She snatched one up, worked her hands down it until she had a
stiff spear of five feet fed out in front of her, and then ran toward the fight.
The monster had Windwolf pinned to the ground. Up close, there was no mistaking the weird-
looking thing for a standard wolfish warg. While equally massive, the vaguely doglike creature
was square-jawed and pug-nosed with a mane and stub tail of thick, short, curly hair. The
monster dog had Windwolf by the shoulder and was shaking him hard. The elf had lost his sword
and was trying to draw his dagger.
Tinker put all her speed and weight into punching the pole tip through the dog's chest. She
hoped that even if the pole failed to penetrate, she might be able to knock the monster back off of
Windwolf. As she closed, she wondered at the wisdom of her plan. The thing was huge. She
never could remember that she was a small person; she had unconsciously used Windwolf as a
scale, and had forgotten that he was nearly a foot taller than she.
This is going to hurt me more than it, she thought, and slammed the pole home.
Amazingly, there was only a moment of resistance, as if she had struck true flesh, and then
the spell parted under the solid metal, and the pole sank up to her clenched hands. The beast
shifted form, back to the gleaming spell. Both the spell form and the creature within reeled in
pain; luckily someone had been careless in the sensory feedback limit. She reached down the
pole, grabbed hold at the eight-foot mark, and shoved hard. The pole speared through the massive
spell form, bursting out through the heavily muscled back, near the rear haunch.
The dog shrieked, breath blasting hot over her, smelling of smoke and sandalwood. It lifted a
front foot to bat at her. She sawтАФtoo late to reactтАФthat the paw had five-inch claws. Before it
could hit her, though, Windwolf's legs scissored around her waist, and she found herself airborne,
sailing toward the side of the booster rocket.
I was right. This is going to hurt.
But then Windwolf plucked her out of the air on his way up to the top of the rocket. The
crane's floodlights snapped onтАФthe transfer of Pittsburgh to the national power grid apparently
now completeтАФand spotlighted them where they landed. Beyond the fence, the rest of the city
lights flickered on.
"Fool," Windwolf growled, dropping her to her feet. "It would have killed you."
They were nearly the exact words he had said during their battle with the saurus. Were they
fated to replay this drama again and again? If so, his next words would be for her to leave.
Windwolf grunted, pushing her behind him. "Run."
There was her cue. Coming across the booster rocket were three of the monstrous dogs, the
poly-coated tarp insulating their charge. Enter monsters, stage right. Exit brave heroine, stage
left, in a dash and jump for the crane ladder.
What disrupted magic better than a length of steel was magnetism! With the power back on,
the crane was operational. If she could get up to it and switch on the electromagnet, the dogs
were toast. Through the bars of the ladder, she could see a fourth monster coming across the
scrap yard, leaping from nonconductive pile to nonconductive pile like a cat transversing a creek
via stepping stones.
She was twenty feet from the cage when it landed on the crane trusses and started up after
her. And she had thought herself so clever in using ironwood instead of steel to build the crane
tower.
"Oh damn, my stupid luck." She frantically scrambled up the rungs, fighting panic now. She
was forty feet up; falling would be bad.
The dog was being equally cautious, taking the time to judge its jump before making it. She