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

The untrained observer might have seen them as a tangled and confused m├кl├йe, a wild jumble of
heaving, flailing, surging bodies and weapons. But as Keill plunged among them, the combat computer
that was the mind of a fighting legionary was sorting all the movements within the tangle, and directing his
own movements at incomparable speed. In slow motion it might have looked like a finely controlled and
smoothly flowing ballet, as Keill spun, twisted, swivelled and leaped in the midst of the others.

But ballet dancers do not include, in their repertoire, bone-crushing blows of fist or boot. Every
eye-baffling move of Keill's brought a moment when an opponent collapsed тАУ into glazed
unconsciousness, or with a cracked bone, or with a nerve centre disabled with pain.

Until finally there was only one left, backing warily from the lean figure of the legionary who stood
calmly amid the heap of fallen bodies.

The crowd went berserk with joy.

Then the sound faded to a tense, expectant rumble, as the two men considered each other. And
in the lull Glr's voice reached tentatively into Keill's mind.

Keill, I hare picked up a trace. Some mind down there is very nervous, very on edge. And I
glimpsed the mental image of an energy rifle.

'Can you pinpoint him?'Keill asked.

Yon seek miracles,Glr replied testily.One individual in this ocean of crazy mudheads for
whom you are showing off?

'Try,'Keill said, smiling inwardly.'While I get back to... showing off.'

Glr withdrew, laughing, and Keill turned his full attention back to his last opponent. He was a
broad-shouldered man, a head taller than Keill, wearing a leather tabard of deep blue that might have
seemed black, had it not rested against the pure and total black of the man's skin. The skin gleamed and
shone as if the man were carved in obsidian, and Keill knew that it was nearly as hard тАУ a mutated
substance like the chitin of an insect's carapace.

Keill also knew, from the previous days, about the man's weapon тАУ a long steel staff with a heavy
club-head at each end. From each club-head bristled slender spikes, like thick hairs, which carried a
substance that caused instant, if temporary, paralysis.

Keill stepped forward, his balance precise, his concentration total. The black man also moved
forward, spinning his strange weapon as he did so. The spin grew faster as the weapon moved from one
hand to the other in a bewildering blur, creating an eerie, menacing howl, forming an almost
unchallengeable shield in front of its wielder.

But the skilful spin weaved a pattern, and patterns repeat themselves. It proved to be a serious
mistake. Keill's eye was quick enough to detect the pattern тАУ and to interrupt it.

Moving at a speed that made it invisible, his hand clamped on to the long steel staff, halting its
spin with a grip that was no less steely. And before either the black warrior or the crowd had fully
registered what had happened, Keill struck. Three times, with fist, knee and boot, so swiftly that the
blows seemed to be simultaneous, to elbow, kneecap and solar plexus.