Joel Rosenberg H

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Torrie. Maggie to serve."
Orphie was still holding forth. " you going to shoot a wolf with one of them
teenie-leetle .22-250 rounds? Sure enough, they'll plop a groundhog in his
tracks, but they're too small for deer and I wouldn't want to go after a wolf
with anything that wouldn't knock a deer head over heels."
"So I'll borrow me a .30-06."
"So you'll borrow yourself a lot of trouble," Ole said, shaking his head.
"What if you run into somebody else with the same idea?"
"You think I look like a wolf?"
"I don't think that heifer you bagged down South last season looked like a
deer, either," Jeff said, loudly.
The tips of Arnie's ears grew red. "It was godawful misty, and I
swear
"
Jeff held up a hand, and Ole copied him, silencing Arnie. "I know. It was an
accident, and it could have happened to anyone. But that sort of thing can
happen," Jeff said, "and I sure as hell wouldn't want to see anybody get hurt.
Forgetting that it's illegal. You just let it be, Arnie," he said, turning to
look pointedly at Torrie, "and see what happens."
Torrie gave a slight nod before he returned to his beer. "Sure. A lone wolf
will probably just move on."
Orphie sniffed.
Jeff smiled.
Torrie nodded, again.
Thorian del Thorian awoke at the light touch, reaching for
No. There was no danger. The dark shape leaning over the bed in the dark of
his bedroom was only Orfindel. There was no need for the 9 mm Taurus pistol in
the nightstand after all these years, firearms had become second nature to
him or the almost impossibly sharp silver-inlaid blade behind the headboard.
It was only Orfindel.
Just Orfindel, he thought, with a silent inner laugh. Merely, Orfindel;
trivially, an Old One, perhaps a Very Old One, had come into his room to
awaken him, as though Orfindel was some peasant servitor to wait upon his
pleasure.
Karin's body lay warm next to him, comforting in its warmth and presence. This
woman of his could light up a dark room, and send night demons fleeing from
his dreams. He touched two fingers to his lips, then gently, gently to the
swell of her hip under the sheet.
"Yes?" he whispered. "What is it?"
"Young Thorian has just returned with his friends," Orfindel said, his voice
low enough not to wake Karin. "He asks for a word with you."
"Very well, Hosea. Thank you; I'll join you in a moment." It was necessary, it
had been agreed many years before, that Thorian would treat Orfindel as though
he were a subordinate, and that he call him by the name the Old One had
assumed, but he had made no bargain with or about his thoughts, and while most
of his honor had long been driven away, leaving behind a need to
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overcompensate for it, Thorian del Thorian could still keep a bargain without
paying any extra.
He dressed quickly, then gave his sleeping wife a quick kiss before exiting
into the hallway; she barely stirred. Among Karin's many virtues was that she
was a heavy sleeper.
Torrie and his two friends were downstairs in the den. They seemed acceptable,
although perhaps a bit effete and citified. Thorian repressed a smile. In the
twenty-odd years since he and Orfindel had made their escape through the
Hidden Ways and out into the
Next World, Thorian had become a proper peasant. At least eighteen generations
of his family had lived in the Middle Dominion, and none of them had ever set
a shod foot on plowed ground, much less a bare one.
But that was a long time ago, and far away.
Torrie had his serious face on, and Thorian could have guessed what it was all
about. The wolves.
He looked over at Orfindel. They were just wolves, weren't they?
Orfindel couldn't really read minds, but sometimes it didn't matter. He
nodded, but with some reservation in the cant of his shoulders, as though to
say, Not quite certainly, but as close as it is possible to be.
"I was talking to Jeff Bjerke tonight," Torrie said. "He's been concerned
about the wolf problem."
Thorian nodded. "He's hardly the only one. Sven was laying for one last night,
and actually got a shot off. He showed me the prints today."
They went off to the south, which was probably just a coincidence.
It was like what Doc Sherve said, when talking about medical diagnosis: "When
you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."
Farmers everywhere had trouble with wolves. A whole chain of unlikely events
would have had to have happened before it would even be possible that the
source of the trouble was Sons of Fenris.
"Yes, but..." Torrie didn't want to come out with it.
Which was silly, if understandable.
Thorian smiled. "If you trust your friends enough to say this much in front of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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