"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 08 - The Chantry Guild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

open yard-space behind them. Just before her lifted the six-meter height of the wooden fence that now
enclosed the town; and which those who inhabited it had also been forced to build.

At the foot of this fence she stopped and, reaching in through a slit in her robe, loosened something. As
she gave her body a shake a coil of loose rope dropped about her feet. She stepped out of it and bent to
pick it up by the running loop already worked into one end.

She gathered up the rest of the rope and dropped it by arm-lengths back onto the sparse grass of the
untended ground at her feet, shaking it out and recoiling it up again into loose loops in her left hand, to
make sure there were no kinks in it. Then, taking the last meter or so of the other end with the running
loop into her right hand, she shook the loop sliding through that eye of rope to a larger circle, swung it a
few times to get the feel of its weight and balance, and took a step back from the foot of the wall.

She looked up at the fence, past the flimsy walkway that allowed it to be patrolled by those on guard,
with no more than their heads showing above the pointed ends of the uprightly placed logs that made it.

Selecting one particular log-end, she swung the captive loop in her right hand in a couple of graceful
circles and then let it fly upward. She had been handling a lasso since her early childhood on the distant
planet of her birth, one of the few Younger Worlds

THE CHANTRY GUILD 3 where a variform of horses had flourished. The loop flew
fair and true to settle over the upper end of the log she had chosen.

She pulled it tightly closed, and tried her weight on the rope. Then, with its aid, she walked up the inner
face of the wall until she could pull herself onto the walkway. Loosening the loop from the log-end, she
enlarged it and put it around her so that it formed a loop diagonally about her body from one shoulder
and around and under her opposite hip. Doubling that loop with more of the rope, she threw the long end
of it down the wall's far side, climbed over the fence and proceeded to rappel down its outside face,
mountaineer fashion. Once solidly on the ground she pulled the rest of the rope around the log-end
overhead and down into her hands. Recoiling it around her waist over her robe as she went, she headed
for the darkness of the forest, only a short distance away.

The forest hid her and she was gone. But she had not left unobserved. One of the early waking
inhabitants of a building, looking out a back window, had seen her go. By bad luck, he was one of the
few locals who tried to curry favor with the Occupation Forces-for there were good and bad Exotics, as
there were people of both kinds in all cultures. His attention had been caught by a glimpse of a figure
moving outside while the curfew of the night just passed was still in effect. Now he lost no time in
dressing and hurrying himself to Military Headquarters.

Consequently, she was almost to her destination when she became aware of being followed by green-
uniformed, booted figures, with the glint of metal in their hands that could only come from power rifles or
needle guns. She went on, not hurrying her pace. They wei-e already close enough to kill her easily with
their weapons, if that was what they wanted. They would be waiting to see if she would lead them to
others; and in any case their preference would be to take her alive; to question her and otherwise amuse
themselves with her before killing her. However, if she could only gain a few minutes more, a small
distance farther . . .

She walked on unhurriedly, her resolve hardening as she went. Even if they tried to take her now before
she reached her intended destination, still all might not be lost. She was Dorsai, of the Dorsai; a native of
that cold, hard, meagerly blessed planet whose only wealth of natural resources lay in its planet-wide