"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 2 - The Gates of Creation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

flaming bladders. The bow was released, and the burning arrow shot upwards and buried it-self deep
within the under part of the floater.

The catapult crew began to wind the string back. A man fell from an opening in the floater and was
followed by ten more. They came down as if parachuting. Their descent was checked by a cluster of
bladders attached to a harness around the shoulders and chest. An arrow caught the first abutal
just before he struck the ground, and then three more of the ten behind him were transfixed.

The survivors landed untouched a few feet from the catapult. They unstrapped their harness, and
the bladders rose away from them. By then, they were surrounded. They fought so fiercely, one got
to the catapult, only to be run through with two spears.

The island-floater, driven by the wind, began to pass over the vil-lage. Other stones on cables
had been dropped, and a few had caught in the tangle of the walls without breaking. Then ropes
fell onto the fronds and the huge loops tightened around them.

Caught at the forward end, the floater swung around so that its bulk hung over this part of the
surface island. By then, the gliders had made their landing, not all successfully. Because of the
density of the vegetation, the crafts had to come down upon fronds. Some were flipped over; some
crashed through several fronds before being caught and held. Some slipped down between the fronds
and smashed into the tough thick bushes.

But from where he stood, Wolff could see at least twenty pilots, unhurt, who were now slipping
through the jungle. And there had to be others.

He heard his name called. Vala had come back and was standing at the foot of the hill.

"What do you intend to do?" she said angrily. "You have to take sides, Jadawin, whether you want
to or not. The abutal will kill you."

"You may be right," he said as he came down the hill. "I wanted to get some idea of what was going
on. I didn't want to rush blindly into this without knowing where everybody was, how the fight was
going on. . . ."

"Always the cautious and crafty Jadawin," she said. "Well, that's all right; it shows you are no
fool, which I already know. Believe me, you need me as much as I need you. You can't go this thing
alone."

He followed her, and presently they came upon Rintrah, crouching under a frond. He gestured at
them for silence. When they were be-side him, Wolff looked at where Rintrah was pointing. Five
abutal warriors were standing not twenty yards from them. The tail of a wrecked glider rose from
behind a crushed bush to their left. They carried small round shields of bone, javelins of bone
tipped with bamboo, and several had bows and arrows. The bows were made of some hornlike
substance, were short and recurved, and formed of two parts that were joined in a central socket
of horn. The warriors were too far away for him to overhear their conference.

"What's the range of your beamer?" Vala said.

"It kills up to fifty feet," he said. "Third-degree burns for the next twenty feet, and after