"Harry Harrison & Katherine MacLean - Web of the Norns" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

With a reflex of revulsion, Grant yanked free from beneath the limp hulk and rose to a half crouch. A
man had just been killed and dropped on top of him, and no one paid any attention. The crowd and
howls had surged away from him and were somewhere else now, although running forms still went past
to plunge into it.
Smoke of flickering tapers, the fumes of cooking, the stench of spilled wine and aged food assailed
his nostrils and stung his eyes; but he could make out that the room was as big as a barn, with hand-hewn
beams close overhead, reflecting back noise and heat and light, and further up, a roof lost in smoky
shadows. The beams seemed to waver in the flickering light with the fury of the human sounds coming
from below them.
The screaming crowd had grown until it was close again, but their backs were toward him. Ragged
hair hung down below their ears; they waved staffs, daggers and broken bottles threateningly, shouting at
someone in the middle. Filthy shirts of rough brown, like burlap, covered each back, hanging over dirty
fur pants.
Grant straightened and found that he was tall enough to see over the heads to the maelstrom in the
centre of the mob.

The crowd was attacking a big man who had his back to one of the supporting pillars. As Grant
watched, the man lunged with a grunting shout, swung a sweeping blow with a long sword, flung himself
back, fended a descending pole from his head with the flat of the sword, smashed back another with a
thing like an iron Indian club in his left hand, carried the smash through with a lunge to the head of the
staff wielder with a crunch, and lunged back to the pillar again. He moved in jerky stops and starts and
retreats of extraordinary energy, slashing and fending, grunting in a half shout with each effort.
The athleticism of it was astonishing, but it was not that which froze Grant. It was the man's costume.
The dull brown shine of leather armour like a picture in an encyclopedia, the glint of chain mail, the
broad-sword, and the Indian club thingтАФa mace ? It was something out of pre-medieval history. What
was he doing here? For a moment, his eyes searched for a camera. But this was real blood.
Where was the way out? Crouching with the wary immobility of a hunted animal, Grant turned his
head. Thick benches and tables were scattered around the empty half of the room, tapers flickered in
howls and added smoke to the murky air, overturned tables and spilled bottles littered the floor. Where
was the door? The dimness and smoke confused his eyes, the ghastly sounds rocked in his brain. Where
in the name of sanity were there even windows? What kind of place was this?
He moved away from the mob sounds, putting a long table between himself and the battle, but a
crescendo howl turned him in time to see the end. The fighter in leather armour was temporarily
confused; his sword lodged in a pole where its edge had turned and cut into the wood. He stood trying to
free his sword. A pole, jabbed like a spear, took him in the cheekbone with a blow that canted his head
over. His sword pulled free as he was hit, but he had no time to lift it. Jolted back and forth under the
thud of heavy staffs finding him at last, hit savagely on all sides at once, the thickset man in barbarian
armour staggered a few steps further from the protecting pillar. With a jointless look of unconsciousness
and broken bones he pitched headlong in Grant's direction.

Grant broke out of his frozen trance and began to back off, still staring, feeling his way by grip on the
splintery boards of the table behind him. Staffs rose and fell over the thing on the floor and daggers
flashed, and he was thankful that the triumphant howling drowned out some of its sound. This might be a
nightmare, but death in this nightmare was as real as any butchery.
The howl died and men mumbling and cursing and nursing bruises and wounds began to look around.
Grant still sidled slowly backward, depending on their attention being held by the dead thing on the floor,
while one of the triumphant attackers bent over it, and pried loose the sword from a dead hand. As he
raised it toward the ceiling in a triumphant drunken arc, his eyes found Grant and saw him moving. Being
seen by one, of these creatures of a nightmare was carrying nightmare too far. Grant froze between the
instinct to turn and run and the hope of being ignored.