"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 5 - The Lavalite World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

He was behind a tree, and McKay sliced the branches of the tree off on
one side. That was to scare the archer, since Callister had said that he
wanted the guy-his name was Kickaha, crazy!-alive. But Kickaha had shot an
arrow and McKay certainly knew where it had been aimed. Only a part of his
body was not hidden by the tree behind which he was concealed. But the arrow
had struck McKay on the only part showing, his shoulder.

If he hadn't been wearing that vest, he'd have been skewered. Even as it
was, the shock of the arrow knocked him down. His beamer flew away from his
opening hands, and, its power still on, it rolled away.

Then, the biggest wolf-a wolf!-McKay had ever seen had gotten caught in
the ray, and it had died, cut into four different parts. McKay was lucky. If
the beamer had fallen pointing the other way, it would have severed him.
Though he was stunned, his shoulder and arm completely numb, he managed to get
up and to run, crouching over, to another tree. He was cursing because
Callister had made him leave his automatic behind. He sure as hell wasn't
going into the clearing after the beamer. Not when Kickaha could shoot an
arrow like that.

Besides, he felt that he was in over his head about fifty fathoms.

There was a hell of a lot of action after that, but McKay didn't see
much of it. He climbed up on a house-sized boulder, using the projections and
holes in it, hauling himself up with one hand. Later he wondered why he'd gone
up where he could be trapped. But he had been in a complete panic, and it had
seemed a logical thing to do. Maybe no one would think of looking for him up
there. He could lie down flat and hide until things settled down. If the boss
won, he'd come down. He could claim then that he'd gone up there to get a
bird's-eye view of the terrain so he could call out to Callister the location
of his enemies.

Meanwhile, his beamer burned itself out, half-melting a large boulder
fifty feet from it while doing so.

He saw Callister running toward the couple and another man, and he
thought Callister had control of the situation. Then the red-haired Kickaha,
who was lying on the ground, had said something to the woman. And she'd lifted
a funny-looking trumpet to her lips and started blowing some notes. Callister
had suddenly stopped, yelled something, and then he'd run like a striped-ass
ape away from them.

And suddenly they were in another world. If things had been bad before,
they were now about as bad as they could be. Well, maybe not quite as bad. At
least, he was alive. But there had been times when he'd wished he wasn't.

So here he was, twelve "days" later. Much had been explained to him,
mostly by Kickaha. But he still couldn't believe that Callister, whose real
name was Urthona, and Red Ore and Anana were thousands of years old. Nor that