"Jane Lindskold - Firekeeper Saga 1 - Through Wolf's Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lindskold Jane)

afoot and blond hair bleached so white by constant exposure to the sun that he would look much the
same at sixty as he did at thirty.
“That it does, Derian.” Race stroked his short but full beard as he glanced around their sheltered forest
camp, systematically noting the areas that would need to be secured now that big predators were about.
“Wolves always sound bigger when you’re on their turf, rather than safe behind a city wall.”

Derian swallowed a retort. In the weeks since Earl Kestrel’s expedition had departed the capital of
Hawk Haven, Race had rarely missed an opportunity to remind the members (other than the earl himself)
that Race himself was the woodsman, while they were mere city folk. Only the fact that Race’s contempt
was so generally administered had kept Derian from calling him out and showing him that a city-bred man
could know a thing or two.

Only that, Derian admitted honestly (though only to himself), and the fact that Race would probably turn
Derian into a smear on the turf. Though Derian Carter was tall enough to need to duck his head going
through low doorways, muscular enough to handle the most spirited horse or work from dawn to dusk
loading and unloading wagons at his father’s warehouses, there was something about Race Forester’s
sinewy form, about the way he carried his slighter build, that made Derian doubt who would be the
winner in a hand-to-hand fight.

And, with another surge of honesty, Derian admitted that the woodsman had earned the right to express
his contempt. Race was good at what he did—many said the best in both Hawk Haven and their rival
kingdom of Bright Bay. What was Derian Carter in comparison? Well trained, but untried.

Derian would never have admitted that before they set out—knowing himself good with a horse or an
account book or even with his fists— but a few things had been hammered into his red head since they
left the capital, things that hadn’t been all that much fun to learn, and Derian didn’t plan on forgetting them
now.

So Derian swallowed his retort and continued removing the tack from the six riding horses. To his right,
burly Ox, his road-grown beard incongruously black against pink, round cheeks, was heaving the packs
from the four mules. When another long, eerie wolfs howl caused the nearest mule to kick back at the
imagined danger, Ox blocked the kick rather than dodging.

That block neatly summed up why Ox was a member of the expedition. Even-tempered, like most big
men who have never been forced to fight, Ox had made his recent living in the Hawk Haven military.
During the current lull in hostilities, however, he had left the military to serve as Earl Kestrel’s bodyguard.

Ox’s birth name, Derian had learned to his surprise, was Malvin Hogge.

“But no one’s called me that since long before my hair started receding,” he’d told Derian, rubbing
ruefully where his curly hairline was making an undignified and premature retreat. “But I prefer the name
that my buddies in Kestrel Company gave me long ago and, strangely enough, no one ever calls me
‘Malvin’ twice.”

Unlike Derian, Ox felt no inordinate awe toward Race Forester, aware that in his own way he was as
valuable as the guide. How many men could shift a battering ram by themselves or do the work of three
packers?

“Think that wolf wants us for dinner?” Ox asked Race in his deep-voiced, ponderous way.