"Dan Parkinson. The Gates of Thorbardin ("DragonLance Saga Heroes II" #2) (angl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

a jutting creek bank a few feet away. Reaching it, he
pulled himself up, water sheeting from him. "Wow," he

said. "Your way down is certainly faster than mine."
When there was no answer, he looked around. There
was no sign of the dwarf. The surface of the stream - a
deep, cold little river no more than twenty feet wide -
shivered with converging ripples and resumed its flow.
He looked downstream, then upstream. No one was in
sight. He waded out as far as he could and began thrust-
ing about beneath the surface, poking here and there
with his hoopak.
Nothing.
"Now where did that dwarf get off to?" Chess mut-
tered. He waded in another step, fighting the current,
and prodded deep into the stream, finding nothing but
water.
Several yards downstream, near the bank, waters
parted and a pair of black cat-ears emerged, followed by
a black head-pelt and then the face of Chane Feldstone,
dripping wet. The dwarf got his whiskers above water
and blew out a long-held breath, then plodded up the
shallows and out of the creek.
"What are you doing over there?" Chess snapped at
him. "I was getting worried. I didn't know whether you
could swim."
The dwarf turned, glaring at him with hot-eyed fury.
"I can't swim! I had to walk." He sat down to empty wa-
ter out of his boots and his pack, then put them on again
and stood, plodding toward the kender with the look of
mayhem in his eyes. "Why did you jump on me up there?
If you can't scale cliffs, why don't you just stay off of
them?"
"I didn't jump on you," Chess said. "I fell on you. It's a
different thing entirely. It...." He looked past the
drenched dwarf and pointed. "Do you know that you
have a following?"
Where thickets began, fifty yards downstream, four of
the great black hunting cats had emerged. Ears laid back,
eyes blazing with feline anticipation, they padded to-
ward the pair, their rumbling purrs like distant thunder.
"Don't talk about it," Chane said. "Run!"
They ran up the creek bank, across a gravel bed, and

onto meadowgrass where thickets converged ahead of
them. The kender, in the lead, dove into the thickets, as
quick and as limber as a rabbit taking cover. The dwarf,
slower of foot, felt hot breath on his back as he bumbled
into a viny wilderness that clawed and pulled at him
from all sides. With one arm up to protect his feet, he