"Douglas Hill - Last Legionary 0 - Young Legionary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hill Douglas)

backwards, falling, braced to roll and come to his feet, to meet another attack. Except that the impact of
his body was too much for the loose scree.

It began to slide. Keill's feet were swept from under him as the slide accelerated. Rolling, tumbling, he felt
the fiery sting of scraped skin on elbows and knees. The whole mountainside seemed to be thundering
down the slope, with him in the midst of it, blinded by dust, helplessly flailing for something solid to stop
his fall.

For an instant a bruising bounce flung him into the air, surrounded by painfully flying pebbles. Instinct
twisted his body in the air, so that he struck the slope again feet first. And as he landed he drove both
feet downwards with crushing power. His heels plunged deep into the sliding gravel - and for a breathless
few seconds he was riding the landslide, standing upright, ankle-deep.

Then he fell backwards, his feet dislodged. But at that moment he and several tons of gravel reached the
bottom of the slope with an echoing roar. Yet he remained on its surface, carried along for many more
metres, but not buried.

Slowly he sat up, grimacing at all the areas of pain on his body. He glanced round, then back up at the
slope, but saw no sign of the boulder that had turned out to be alive. Probably a stonetoad, he thought, in
its camouflaged shell. They were supposed to be venomous as well as vicious - but the landslide seemed
to have swallowed this one up.

He stood up carefully, checking himself over. He had lost some skin, but mostly in superficial grazes,
though several of them were bleeding slightly. But by some miracle - perhaps because of that wild
moment when he had ridden the slide like a skier - no bones were broken.

He knew just how lucky he had been. He also knew that luck had a habit of running out. And he still had
a great deal of distance to cover.

He limped away, along the spur of rock that extended out like a great, flattened wall. And shortly he saw,
with delight, that his luck had not run out yet. From a narrow crack near the top of the spur, a small
underground spring spewed clear mountain water, in a glittering arc that became a cheerily bubbling
cascade down to the vale below.

Eagerly he clambered down to the shallow pool at the base of the spur, and waded in to stand under the
drenching waterfall. The water was icy, and its effect on his cuts, grazes and bruises was fiery. But those
were torments that he welcomed. He raised his face to the water, gulping a mouthful of its frosty purity,
feeling dust and sweat and blood sluicing away, feeling recharged, as if the water was some powerful
stimulant.

Unwrapping his ragged loincloth, he rinsed it as clean as he could, and dabbed carefully at his wounds.
The gashes on his arm, from the wyvern, had crusted over, and began oozing blood again. But they
seemed clean, as did the lesser damage from his fall. Reassured, he climbed reluctantly out of the natural
showerbath on to a flat piece of dry rock nearby. The vale was warm with sunlight and protected from
the wind, and he felt a deep compulsion to stretch out and doze on the sun-warmed rock. But he had no
time for lazing. Rewrapping his loincloth, he moved away across the vale.

Now and then something tiny, bright-shelled and multi-legged skittered away from his path. And once
something less small and thickly furred sprang out of a clump of dry grass and bounced away like a furry
ball. But he merely glanced at them, and walked on. They seemed to be no danger, and they were