4

The man froze near the tree, which was not reached by the faint light of the burnt out fire. The tall man looked intently and beckoned the victim to him.

As if enchanted, Lesana took a step forward, but froze when she met an invisible barrier. Something prevented me from moving on. And green, like swamp lights, eyes flickered, attracted ...

Only then did the girl remember: blood! The charmed ore of the guardian is what does not let her go beyond the outlined circle. The werewolf knew this. But he needed food, and he was looking for a way to get it. And the victim could not resist the inviting gaze, enveloping, attractive, promising ... Therefore, she leaned over and hastily scratched the ground with her nails, seized by the last spring frost. The barrier separating people from the inhabitant of the night collapsed.

Lesana stepped out of the safe circle into the darkness, reaching out to the man. Oh, how she longed to touch him! To snuggle up with your whole body, to inhale the smell, to feel the warmth emanating from the skin ... How long she had been waiting for him! Exactly him! Why do we need Meerut when there is a walker in the night opposite! Next to him, you can not be afraid of the dark, he will not give offense ... Thoughts were confused in my head, my mind was foggy, the attraction became stronger. The walker smiled carnivorously, but instead of approaching, he beckoned the victim, silently retreating into the thicket.

The girl's heart was filled with joy. Suddenly it became easy and calm. Here she is walking alone through the black forest and is not afraid of anything, and ahead in impenetrable darkness her companion is sneaking, in every movement of which a predatory bestial habit is guessed. And he leads her... leads... leads...

She did not understand how long they had been walking and how soon they had stopped. The man finally stepped towards Lesana and pulled her towards him. She clung to her broad chest, smelled the sharp smell of the beast, felt strong hands on her hips. Sweet languor spilled over the body. The breath of the walker burned his skin, he didn’t want to think about anything, and he didn’t have the strength to think.

And suddenly the monster pushed away the doomed victim, arched and roared in pain. The spell dissipated. The girl recoiled, choking on the suffocating stink of dog and sweat.

A deathly blue light flashed in the darkness, and the werewolf, growling and howling, rolled on the ground, enveloped in a ghostly glow. With horror, Lesana saw a terrible animal head on human shoulders. The creature fell to all fours, arching its spine unnaturally. Tearing clothes crackled, revealing not human skin, but wet animal skin.

A few moments later, a huge wolf stood in the clearing. Bared muzzle, wet fangs ... now he will rush! But the blue radiance enveloped the predator in a swaying haze, raising the stiff hair along the ridge, running through it with dazzling blue sparks. The walker roared again, wanted to rush forward, but as if he ran into an invisible wall, rolled over on his back and whimpered in pain and horror - plaintively, like a puppy. Every creature wants to live... And the werewolf has already understood that his life is coming to an end.

Kref froze in front of him. There was no anger in his eyes. But also indulgence. The same dead wasteland gaped there, only the reflections of a ghostly glow melted in the depths of the pupils. A flickering light stretched from his palms to the werewolf writhing on the ground, which, before dying, tried to take on a human form, tried, but, restrained by the Gift, could not. A sharp wave of his hands and the resisting monster dragged him to the warrior, as if pulled together by an invisible lasso. The blade flashed - the man took a huge wolf on a knife. The furious roar fell silent, replaced by a gurgling wheeze.

Lesana sank to the ground, shaking all over. She had never seen the undead. And even more so, so close. With horror, the girl realized that the black forest was floating before her eyes. There was nothing to breathe, a hard lump blocked his throat, cold sweat poured out over his body, his insides twisted, and what he had eaten the day before dangerously stirred in his stomach, but ... fortunately, it did not come out.

However, after a moment, the girl, panting, trembling with weakness and experienced fear, was mercilessly shaken. Fingers of steel closed around her shoulder, and the kref dragged her charge away from the thicket to a safe clearing.

The fire flared up as if oil had been thrown into it. The man leaned over to his companion, who had fallen helplessly on the felt, lifted her by the chin and peered into her face.

“I told you not to wipe off the blood.”

- I...

- Said?

“Yes…” whispered Lesana. But I didn't wash...

She broke off, remembering how she had cried under her cloak, and how she had wiped her tears away with her hands.

I didn’t have time to remember anything else, because two heavy slaps in the face deafened me to a ringing in my ears.

Lesana had never been beaten before. In distant childhood, it happened that it fell from the mother, and even then, for the sake of warning, more. Therefore, to this day, she has not experienced pain from real beatings. The one from which the body goes numb, and fear settles in the heart.

Breath caught.

- Volkolaks are now in rut. He wouldn't eat you. He would have been strong, but he tried to bite me, ”the calm voice of the guardian came from afar. “You almost brought trouble on both of us. This is unacceptable. It's still a long way to go, if this happens again, I'll take you back to Nevezh and we will assume that your compatriots refused kref.

The unfortunate heart went cold:

- Not! Not! I will never again...

- Be silent.

Cold gray eyes looked still without anger. But for some reason, the girl felt insignificant and miserable.

"I'm sorry sir, I'm sorry!" she pleaded.

Alas, the prayer went unanswered. The man silently unwound the rag in his palm, scraped off the crust of dried blood with the tip of a knife, and again, dropping the charmed ore, closed the circle that his companion tore apart. It's all because of her... Stupid!

However, Lesana noticed that the kref didn't even wince as he gnawed at his wound again. He didn't seem to be in pain.

The guard again drew cuts on the girl's face. With difficulty, she swallowed the sobs torn from her chest and asked:

- Let me bandage ... 

The man extended his hand. Lesana carefully washed off the blood from her, pouring from a flask, silently paying attention to the hard, scarred hand of the kref. Bandaging the wound, the girl returned to her uncomfortable bed. The face hurt. No, the bruises will remain. I wanted to cry again.

Tears trembled in her eyes, and then she remembered that bloody cuts were still drying on her cheeks. I had to throw my head back and blink hard for a long time, driving away the desire to burst into tears from pain, belated fright, resentment towards myself and life, which so treacherously separated from everything dear and familiar.

Lesana fell asleep only in the morning.

* * *

In the next two days, nothing unusual happened, except that instead of home-made cakes and dried meat, the travelers now ate game that the guard got. Alas, the hares that shook their fat during the winter were bony, and their meat was dry and sinewy. But there was no need to be picky.

During the entire journey, kref exchanged with his ward hardly a couple of words.

The silent journey was interrupted on the morning of the fourth day, when the bare forest gave way to fields spread out on both sides of a wide, smoothly flowing river.

Going around a low hill overgrown with willows, the wanderers drove out onto a well-worn path, to which several roads converged at once. On one of them, two horses were also cowardly.

To Lesana's surprise, her companion pulled the reins, waiting for the strangers to approach.

When the men drove closer, the girl realized that she and kreff would not do the rest of the way to the Citadel alone.

“Mira is on the way, Kleskh,” a lean, wiry, and also short-haired man, sitting on a bay horse, greeted the guard.

So Lesana learned the name of her silent companion.

“Mira is on her way, Donatos,” he echoed.

He nodded and directed his stallion forward along the road. The prickly eyes looked at Lesana and she groaned silently. The same sorcerer who came to Nevezh after the disappearance of Zoryanka to surround the settlement with a spell! Goosebumps ran across my skin. The guard has not changed much, except that the folds at the corners of thin tightly compressed lips lie deeper, and gray hair has been added to the short-cut hair and stubble on the chin.

He looked like forty springs. He was suitable for her father ... And not only for her, but also for his companion. The girl turned her gaze to the ward Donatos.

An overweight and flabby guy, not much older than Lesana herself, swayed in the saddle. “Blood with milk” to say about such a person is like calling them skinny. Bright freckles scattered across the bridge of the nose and plump cheeks, and dark eyes looked with benevolent curiosity. And emanated from him ... kindness, confidence, warmth. What was he to do in the Citadel among the likes of Kleskh and Donatos?

The young man, meanwhile, directed his skate to Lesana's filly and said:

- Peace is on the way.

“Mira,” the girl replied, and hesitated, not knowing what else to add.

“You don’t look happy,” the fat man rightly remarked and added: “My name is Tamir.

- I'm Lesana.

They were silent, looking at the backs of their companions, and then the girl confessed in a barely audible voice:

“I didn't really want to go.

The guy looked longingly at the road that went into the distance, which led to his house.

"Me too," he replied softly. “When the kref came over a year ago, he was going to pick up the shopkeeper's son from our street. Said, "He'll be good."

- Why didn't you take it?

Tamir angrily waved his hand, clutching the reins:

- He drowned. Last spring.

The girl sighed.

- I was going to Stargrad ... - the interlocutor continued upset. - My parents blessed me to work in the town bakery.

“And the matchmakers were supposed to come to me,” Lesana shared sadly.

They both fell silent, each spinning about the unfulfilled.

They rode for a long time, silent, listening to the measured creak of the harness and the clatter of hooves, and then Donatos and Kleskh directed the horses aside, along a narrow road running into a bare grove.

Even before dusk, the horsemen drove into a small village. There was a holiday here! It’s a pity that the guests appeared at the very end of it - the peasants were already taking away tables and benches from the streets, the women were washing the dishes.

Travelers were greeted with respect, dropping everything. The Krefs were escorted to the elder's hut, and Lesana and Tamir were assigned to stay in a neighboring house. By that time it was already getting dark, therefore, no matter how the wanderers dreamed of a bath, they only had to splash in the tub. But they had a truly rich dinner! The hostess busied herself collecting the best dishes: rich stew, baked fish, pies.

- Yes, you eat, eat, - she kept saying, - that's what joy we have - we send our daughter to study! How much the village is worth, the Autumn Kreffs have never found here. And wow, my Eilisha, thank the Guardians, will go to the Citadel! People will be treated!

The one in question was sitting at the other end of the table, her eyes downcast in shame. Lesana caught Tamir's admiring glance.

The girl was really pretty: her dark hair, pulled into two braids, curled in a small wave, touchingly raised eyebrows over huge eyes made her face defenseless and childish, and her skin was clean, tender, with a barely noticeable fluff.

The future doctor was embarrassed by her mother's pride and wrapped her arms around her narrow shoulders. From this movement, Tamir suddenly leaned forward, pulling off his knitted tank top:

- Chilled?

The girl blushed and froze, allowing her immense clothes to be thrown over her elegant embroidered shirt. Either she really liked the guy, or she didn’t have the courage to object, Lesana didn’t understand, but she was imbued with affection for the shy girl.

Settling down to sleep not on hard ground, but on a bench lined with hay, Lesana suddenly thought for the first time in recent days that it might still be fine. Homesickness during her journey had so dried up her soul that now another need was born in her - to enjoy at least something. You can't just suffer and grieve. They don’t take her to execution, to training! Look, the village of Ailishi is rejoicing, and she herself is glad of the luck that has befallen her. I wonder who her kref is? With these thoughts, Lesana fell asleep.

They left the next morning. Kref Eilisha turned out to be a young beautiful woman. Next to the disfigured Kleskh, next to the cold, as if carved from stone, Donatos, the guardian looked like a tender lily of the valley between two dry burdocks. She had white, blush-lit skin, thin, high eyebrows, and long eyelashes that Lesana had never seen in her life. It seemed that if they blinked faster and more often, the Autumn One would take off. But her eyes were very cold.

And when the beautiful hands of the sorceress threw off the head of the cape, the girl could hardly contain her surprised exclamation - the woman's flaxen hair turned out to be cut as short as the men's.

But the main shock overtook the future students of the Citadel when they began to sit on the saddles. Kref Eilishi was wearing ... pants. Ordinary leather men's pants! Tamir blushed deeply, because he clearly saw the place where the legs of the Autumn One converged. However, the guardian did not notice the embarrassment of the young companions, calmly took apart the reins and touched her mare with her heels, directing her away from the village.

Lesana stared at the woman's back in shock. The girl herself, as expected, was dressed in a shirt, a wide raznopolka and knitted stockings. In life, she would not have put on male ports, not to mention the fact that in a sort of shame to appear in public. However, the guardian did not seem to notice how the women and men who were seeing them off shyly look away.

The Kreffs rode ahead, the future students trailed behind them.

Tamir's stallion was walking stirrup to stirrup with Ailishin, and the young man was already quietly talking to his companion about something. Lesana felt abandoned. Fortunately, Eilish, noticing her despondency, reined in her horse. 

- Do you want me to fly? she suggested timidly. 

- Can you? - the companion was surprised, carefully touching the bruises on her cheeks.

She herself could not do anything of the sort, and therefore once again doubted the choice of kref. Had he made a mistake in taking her out of Ignorance?

“A little bit,” Eilisha admitted, blushing in embarrassment.

- Will it hurt? Lesana clarified with childish timidity.

“No,” the girl smiled. Give me your hand, don't be afraid.

Lesana held out her hand. Warm, gentle fingers touched the wrist, and air bubbles seemed to run from them through the blood. Ticklish!

But then Lesana touched her face in disbelief and immediately gasped:

- Does not hurt! At all!

“I know,” said the doctor, looking down. - I treated cattle like that ...

And then, realizing what stupidity had said, she blushed even more than before, and Tamir for some reason looked at Lesana with such pride, as if he himself had saved her from bruises.

The remaining days of the journey passed imperceptibly and monotonously. The only difference was that now Donatos was talking about the place of lodging for the night, and Lesana no longer had to fall asleep with blood-stained cheeks. The sorcerer read some kind of spell, outlined a halt with a knife, and the travelers calmly lay down.

With surprise, Lesana caught herself on the fact that the fear absorbed with mother's milk to find herself outside the house at night had dulled. It was foolish, having three Autumn Ones as companions, to still be afraid of walking in the night. In addition, during the day they got so tired that they fell asleep without any dreams, and even if someone approached the place of their overnight stay under the cover of darkness, the exhausted travelers did not hear it.