"Douglas Hill - The Last Legionary 04 - Planet Of The Warlord" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hill Douglas)

Douglas Hill ┬й1981



Piper Edition 1989

ISDN 0 330 26713 2
 PART ONE



PRISONER OF THE DEATHWING




CHAPTER ONE



The lean, dark-haired young man was the last to enter the arena. The heat of Banthei's giant sun met him
like a wall тАУ made to seem even more solid by the unbelievable noise. More than a hundred thousand
Bantheins, in steeply banked tiers rising high above the oval arena, roared their welcome to the fourteen
combatants.

Within that avalanche of sound, the young man could hear his own name being chanted by a
section of the crowd that was clearly backing him to win.

'Ran-dor! Ran-dor! Ran-dor!'

As the Banthei officials began the opening ceremony, the young man moved into the shade cast
by the three-metre height of the arena's containing wall, and stood relaxed, his arms loosely folded. He
was slightly above average height, well-muscled, with the balanced litheness of the trained athlete. His
dark-grey trousers and boots might have been part of a uniform, but with them he wore only a light,
loose-fitting shirt that left his arms bare from the shoulders. In that arena, among the mostly hulking and
often misshapen forms of the other combatants, he seemed slight, and unimpressive.

He was also the only one of the fourteen who was empty-handed.

Two voices reached him, over the crowd's uproar, from near the edge of the arena.

'I tell y', he's got t' be,' one voice was saying. 'Y' seen him fight. An' somebody seen him dressed,
with th' thing on his tunic тАУ y' know, insignia.'

'Sun's got t' y',' the second voice scoffed. 'They're all dead, ev'body knows it. Planet blew up, or
somethin'.'

The young man in the arena glanced round and saw two flashily dressed Banthein gamblers
staring down at him. He turned away again, his face showing nothing of the grim satisfaction that he felt.