"Barb & J. C. Hendee - Noble Dead 01 - Dhampir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hendee JC & Barb)

bedroom floor. Crossing to the bed, it quickly reached out with one hand and clamped it down over the
old woman’s mouth.

She woke, eyes wide and frightened, but only for a brief moment. Then she stared with an empty gaze
into the eyes above her. The night visitor relaxed its grip, lowering its head to her throat. All in the room
became still and quiet and timeless.

Then its head swung up to stare at the open window. A dark stain covered the side of the old woman’s
throat. The visitor began to lower its head again to the old woman, but paused. With an owl-tilt of its
head, its gaze returned to the window as it listened.

Outside, someone was walking the village path. The visitor moved to the window.

Strolling along the village path was a young woman wearing studded leather armor and high, soft boots
pulled over earth-colored breeches. In one hand she held a short pole, and in the other a long knife with
which she worked at sharpening the pole’s end into a crude point. At her side hung a short falchion in its
worn leather scabbard. The night was too dark for most eyes, but as the woman passed between
moon-shadows of cottages and nearby trees, the visitor saw her dark hair with hidden shimmers of red
that offset smooth, young skin little more than two decades of age. No true fear or wariness showed in
the woman’s posture as she moved through the village, fashioning the wooden short-spear.

“Hunter,” it whispered to itself with amusement.

The pathetic humor of what it saw was too much to hold in, and it laughed under its breath as it leaped
out the window to spider-walk up the cottage wall onto the roof. The dark form shrank and vanished into
the night forest.



Chapter One



Long past sundown, Magiere walked into another shabby Stravinan village without really seeing it.
Peasants lived the same way everywhere. All their bleak, shapeless huts began to blur together after six
years, and Magiere only noted their number as a gauge of population. No more than a hundred people
lived here, and perhaps as few as fifty. None showed themselves this late in the night, though she heard
the creak of a door or window shutter as she passed by, someone peeking out when she wasn’t looking.
The only other sound was the scrape of her hunting knife on hard wood as she sharpened the end of the
short wooden pole no longer than her arm.

Darkness didn’t frighten her. It suggested to her none of the fear-conjured threats that made these
peasants shudder behind their barred doors. She checked her falchion in its sheath, making sure she
could draw it out easily if needed, and continued her stroll toward the far end of the village. A drizzle of
rain began, which soon matted down her black hair, smothering any crimson tint it might have shown in
the light. With her pale skin, she must look as baneful to the villagers as their visions of the creature
they’d hired her to eliminate.
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