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

Anyone watching would have seen no change in his easy, relaxed stance. But inside, Keill was
marshalling and focusing all the power, the speed, the supremely controlled combat readiness of a
legionary of Moros.
 The other thirteen combatants were also readying themselves in their own way, which in most
cases meant paying attention to their weaponry. Keill surveyed them carefully, for they were winners like
himself, whose strength and skills had got them through the eliminating rounds of the first four days.
Today would be the two final eliminations тАУ and by the end there would be only two combatants left, to
meet in the climactic fight of the sixth day of the Battle Rites.

The Rites had a long history, reaching back to a time soon after the planet Banthei had been
colonised, during the centuries of mankind's Scattering throughout the galaxy. The Bantheins had turned
out to be an unusually violent, aggressive group, much given to duelling, feuding and, as the colony grew
and developed, localised warring. Some wise ruler had decided that it would be better to turn that
tendency into a ritual, before the colonists could wipe themselves out.

Over the centuries the Battle Rites had developed into a gigantic, highly commercialised
entertainment, drawing visitors and contestants from all over the Inhabited Worlds. At this very moment,
Keill knew, elsewhere on Banthei armies of men were marching against one another, guided by intricate
battle plans, where victory would be won by the most skilful strategist, without a single shot being fired.
On another battlefield, huge high-technology war machines, robot-controlled, were fighting thunderous,
earth-shaking battles on land and at sea. Above them, fleets of robot aircraft wove intricate patterns in
the skies and blew each other to bits. And even above them, squadrons of robot spaceships clashed at
terrifying speeds and with more terrifying weapons.

All these battles would be watched by millions of avid spectators, on giant viewscreens around
the planet тАУ and by many millions more throughout the Inhabited Worlds, on vid-tapes. But for all those
hundreds of millions of viewers, the main attraction was the individual combat section, when for five days
groups of fighting men and women, fourteen at a time, entered the oval arena and fought with bloody fury
until only one from each group remained standing.

The winner of the final combat would be, for a while, one of the most famous and admired
people in the galaxy. Even the names of the runners-up тАУ those who survived till the fifth day тАУ would be
on the lips of humans on nearly every Inhabited World. So already there would be few people in
mankind's galaxy who had not heard that one of those survivors was Keill Randor, the last legionary of
Moros.

But for Keill himself, it mattered only thatone person, out of all the billions, knew of his presence
on Banthei.

The official oration wound down, the ceremony came to an end. And the crowd screamed
expectantly as the combatants began to move, seeking favourable positions, sizing up their opponents.

Keill stood as quietly relaxed as ever, lowering his hands to his sides. In front of him, a bulky
figure wearing a light kilt of metallic cloth turned and glared towards him.

Many of the best fighters in the Rites came from the Altered Worlds тАУ planets where the
environment, over generations, had wreaked changes on the basic human form. The man now sidling
towards Keill was one such тАУ squat and inhumanly broad, with leathery reddish skin, his small hairless
head set low in the midst of massive, humped shoulder muscles. In one huge paw he held a weapon that
was both a bludgeon and a short sword тАУ a heavy, gnarled club with a razor-sharp blade set edgeways