"Heinlein, Robert A- Glory Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

I hit him a diving tackle, illegal and low, and down he went--but not over into the water. And suddenly I had a double armful of struggling and very smelly Golem.
But I had a wildcat helping me at once, and quickly thereafter Rufo, dripping wet, added his vote.
But it was a stalemate and one that we were bound to lose in time. Igli outweighed all of us put together and seemed to be nothing but muscle and stink and nails and teeth. We were suffering bruises, contusions, and flesh wounds--and we weren't doing Igli any damage, Oh, he screamed like a TV grunt & groaner every time one of us twisted an ear or bent back a finger, but we weren't really hurting him and he was decidedly hurting us. There wasn't a chance of dragging that hulk into the water.
I had started with my arms around his knees and I stayed that way, of necessity, as long as I could, while Star tried to weigh down one of his arms and Rufo the other. But the situation was fluid; Igli thrashed like a rattler with its back broken and was forever getting one limb or another free and trying to gouge and bite. It got us into odd positions and I found myself hanging onto one callused foot, trying to twist it off, while I stared into his open mouth, wide as a bear trap and less appetizing. His teeth needed cleaning.
So I shoved the toe of his foot into his mouth.
Igli screamed, so I kept on shoving, and pretty soon he didn't have room to scream. I kept on pushing.
When he had swallowed his own left leg up to the knee, be managed to wrench his right arm loose from Star and grabbed at his disappearing leg--and I grabbed his wrist. "Help me!" I yelped to Star. "Push!"
She got the idea and shoved with me. That arm went into his mouth to the elbow and the leg went farther in, quite a bit of the thigh. By, then Rufo was working with us and forced Igli's left hand in past his cheek and into the jaws. Igli wasn't struggling so hard by then, short on air probably, so getting the toe of his right foot started into his mouth simply required determination, with Rufo hauling back on his hairy nostrils while I bore down with a Knee on his chin and Star pushed.
We kept on feeding him into his mouth, gaining an inch at a time and never letting up. He was still quivering and trying to get loose when we had him rolled up clear to his hips, and his rank armpits about to disappear.
It was like rolling a snowball in reverse; the more we pushed, the smaller he got and the more his mouth stretched--ugliest sight I ever have seen. Soon he was down to the size of a medicine ball . . . and then a soccer ball . . . then a baseball and I rolled him between my palms and kept pushing, hard.
--a golf ball, a marble, a pea . . . and finally there was nothing but some dirty grease on my hands.
Rufo took a deep breath. "I guess that'll teach him not to put his foot in his mouth with his betters. Who's ready for breakfast?"
"I want to wash my hands first," I said.
We all bathed, using plenty of soap, then Star took care of our wounds and had Rufo treat hers, under her instructions. Rufo is right; Star is the best medic. The stuff she used on us did not sting, the cuts closed up, the flexible dressings she put over them did not have to be changed, and fell off in time with no infection and no scars. Rufo had one very bad bite, about forty cents' worth of hamburger out of his left buttock, but when Star was through with him, he could sit down and it didn't seem to bother him.
Rufo fed us little golden pancakes and big German sausages, popping with fat, and gallons of good coffee. It was almost noon before Star loosed the wards again and we set out for our descent down the cliff.
Chapter 7

The descent beside the great waterfall into Nevia valley is a thousand feet and more than sheer; the cliff overhangs and you go down on a line, spinning slowly like a spider. I don't advise this; it is dizzy-making and I almost lost those wonderful pancakes.
The view is stupendous. You see the waterfall from the side, free-springing, not wetting the cliff, and falling so far that it shrouds itself in mist before it hits bottom. Then as you turn you face frowning cliff, then a long look out over a valley too lush and green and beautiful to be believed--marsh and forest at the foot of the cliff, cultivated fields in middle distance a few miles away, then far beyond and hazy at the base but sharp at the peaks a mighty wall of snow-covered mountains.
Star had sketched the valley for me. "First we fight our way through the marsh. After that it is easy going--we simply have to look sharp for blood kites. Because we come to a brick road, very nice."
"A yellow brick road?" I asked.
"Yes. That's the clay they have. Does it matter?"
"I guess not. Just don't make a hobbit of it. Then what?"
"After that we'll stop overnight with a family, the squire of the countryside there. Good people, you'll enjoy them."
"And then the going gets tough," Rufo added.
"Rufo, don't borrow trouble!" Star scolded. "You will please refrain from comments and allow Oscar to cope with his problems as he comes to them, rested, clear-eyed, and unworried. Do you know anyone else who could have handled Igli?"
"Well, since you put it that way . . . no."
"I do put it that way. We all sleep in comfort tonight. Isn't that enough? You'll enjoy it as much as anyone."
"So will you."
"When did I ever fail to enjoy anything? Hold your tongue. Now, Oscar, at the root of the cliff are the Horned Ghosts--no way to avoid them, they'll see us coming down. With luck we won't see any of the Cold Water Gang; they stay back in the mists. But if we have the bad luck to encounter both, we may have the good luck that they will fight each other and let us slip away. The path through the marsh is tricky; you had best study, this sketch until you know it. Solid footing is only where little yellow flowers grow no matter how solid and dry a piece looks. But, as you can see, even if you stay carefully on the safe bits, there are so many side trails and dead ends that we could wander all day and be trapped by darkness--and never get out."
So here I was, coming down first, because the Horned Ghosts would be waiting at the bottom. My privilege. Wasn't I a "Hero"? Hadn't I made Igli swallow himself?
But I wished that the Horned Ghosts really were ghosts. They were two-legged animals, omnivorous. They ate anything, including each other, and especially travelers. From the belly up they were described to me as much like the Minotaur; from there down they were splayfooted satyrs. Their upper limbs were short arms but without real hands--no thumbs.
But oh those horns! They had horns like Texas longhorns, but sticking up and forward.
However, there is one way of converting a Horned Ghost into a real ghost. It has a soft place on its skull, like a baby's soft spot, between those horns. Since the brute charges head down, attempting to impale you, this is the only vulnerable spot that can be reached. All it takes is to stand your ground, don't flinch, aim for that one little spot--and hit it.
So my task was simple. Go down first, kill as many as necessary to insure that Star would have a safe spot to land, then stand fast and protect her until Rufo was down. After that we were free to carve our way through the marsh to safety. If the Cold Water Gang didn't join the party--
I tried to ease my position in the sling I was riding--my left leg had gone to sleep--and looked down. A hundred feet below the reception committee had gathered.
It looked like an asparagus patch. Of bayonets.
I signaled to stop lowering. Far above me, Rufo checked the line; I hung there, swaying, and tried to think. If I had them lower me straight into that mob, I might stick one or two before I myself was impaled. Or maybe none--The only certainty was that I would be dead long before my friends could join me.
On the other hand, besides that soft spot between the horns, each of these geeks had a soft underbelly, just made for arrows. If Rufo would lower me a bit-
I signaled to him. I started slowly down, a bit jerkily, and he almost missed my signal to stop again. I had to pull up my feet; some of those babies were a-snorting and a-ramping around and shoving each other for a chance to gore me. One Nijinsky among them did manage to scrape the sole of my left buskin, giving me goose flesh clear to my chin.
Under that strong inducement I pulled myself hand over hand up the line far enough to let me get my feet into the sling instead of my fanny. I stood in it hanging onto the line and standing on one foot and then on the other to work pins and needles out. Then I unslung my bow and strung it. This feat would have been worthy of a trained acrobat--but have you ever tried to bend a bow and let fly while standing in a bight at one end of a thousand-foot line and clinging to the line with one hand?
You lose arrows that way. I lost three and almost lost me.
I tried buckling my belt around the line. That caused me to hang upside down and lost me my Robin Hood hat and more arrows. My audience liked that one; they applauded--I think it was applause--so, for an encore, I tried to shift the belt up around my chest to enable me to hang more or less straight down--and maybe get off an arrow or two.
I didn't quite lose my sword.
So far, my only results had been to attract customers ("Mama, see the funny man!") and to make myself swing back and forth like a pendulum.
Bad as the latter was, it did give me an idea. I started increasing that swing, pumping it up like a playground swing. This was slow wore and it took a while to get the hang of it, as the period of that pendulum of which I was the weight was over a minute--and it does no good to try to hurry a pendulum; you have to work with it, not against it. I hoped my friends could see well enough to guess what I was doing and not foul it up.
After an unreasonably long time I was swinging back and forth in a flattish arc about a hundred feet fang, passing very fast over the heads of my audience at the bottom of each swing, slowing to a stop at the end of each swing. At first those spike heads tried to move with me, but they tired of that and squatted near the midpoint and watched, their heads moving as I swung, like spectators of a slow-motion tennis match.
But there is always some confounded innovator. My notion was to drop off at one end of this arc where it just missed the cuff and make a stand there with my back to the wall. The ground was higher there, I would not have so far to drop. But one of those horned horrors figured it out and trotted over to that end of the swing. He was followed by two or three more.
That settled it; I would nave to drop off at the other end. But young Archimedes figured that out, too. He left his buddies at the cliff face and trotted after me. I pulled ahead of him at the low point of the swing--but slowed down and he caught up with me long before I reached the dead point at the end. He had only a hundred feet to do in about thirty seconds--a slow walk. He was under me when I got there.
The odds wouldn't improve; I kicked my feet clear, hung by one hand and drew sword during that too-slow traverse, and dropped off anyway. My notion was to spit that tender spot on his head before my feet touched the ground.