"Bova, Ben - Orion 07 - Vengeance of Orion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

that the chariot skewed wildly, tumbling the warrior onto the dusty ground. The
charioteer either fell or ducked behind the chariot's siding.
Other combats were turning the worn-bare field into a vast cloud of dust,
chariots wheeling, spears hurtling through the air, shrill battle cries and
shouted curses ringing everywhere. The foot soldiers seemed to be holding back,
letting the noblemen fight their single encounters for the first few moments of
the battle.
One voice pierced all the other noises, a weird screaming cry like a seagull
gone mad.
"The battle cry of Odysseus," Poletes said. "You can always hear the King of
Ithaca above all others."
But I was still concentrating on Diomedes. His charioteer reined in his team and
the warrior hopped down to the ground, two spears gripped in his left hand, his
massive figure-eight shield bumping against his helmet and greaves.
"Ah, a lesser man would have speared his foe from the chariot," Poletes said
admiringly. "Diomedes is a true nobleman. Would that he had been in Argos when
Clytemnestra's men put me out!"
Diomedes approached the fallen warrior, who clambered back to his feet and held
his shield before him, drawing his long sword from its scabbard. The prince of
Argos took his longest and heaviest spear in his right hand and shook it
menacingly. I could not hear what the two men were saying to each other, but
they shouted something back and forth.
Suddenly both men dropped their weapons, rushed to each other, and embraced like
a couple of long-lost brothers. I was stunned.
"They must have relatives in common," Poletes explained. "Or one of them might
have been a guest in the other's household sometime in the past."
"But the battle..."
He shook his gray head. "What has that to do with it? There are plenty of others
to kill."
The two warriors exchanged swords, then they both got back onto their chariots
and drove in opposite directions.
"No wonder this war has lasted ten years," I muttered.
But although Diomedes and his first encounter of the day ended nonviolently,
that was the only bit of peace I saw amid the carnage of the battle. Chariots
hurtled at each other, spearmen driving their fourteen-foot weapons into their
enemies like medieval knights would use their lances nearly two thousand years
later. The bronze spear points were themselves the length of a man's arm. When
all the energy generated by a team of four galloping horses was focused on the
gleaming tip of that sharp spear point, it was if a high-velocity cannon shell
tore into its target. Armored men were lifted off their feet, out of their
chariots, when those spears found them. Bronze armor was no protection against
that tremendous force.
The warriors preferred to fight from the chariots, I saw, although here and
there men had alighted and faced their opponents afoot. Still the infantry
soldiers hung back, skulking and squinting in the swirling clouds of dust, while
the noblemen faced each other singly. Were they waiting for a signal? Was there
some tactic in this bewildering melee of individual combats? Or was it that the
foot soldiers knew that they could never face an armored nobleman and those
deadly spears?
Here two chariots clashed together, the spearman of one driving his point