"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 09 - Kingdom of Royth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

It was apparently late afternoon, with a westering sun sliding down from a flawless blue sky. But the
western horizon itself had sprouted several tall columns of smoke, coiling greasily straight up into the sky
for hundreds of feet before they plumed out at the top into broad, feathery clouds. There was the source
of the smoke odor, but what lay at the base of those columns and clouds was invisible just beyond the
horizon. Still, whatever might be there was more likely to be a source of help than the empty ocean
nearer at hand. Or at least it could provide information about what sort of beings inhabited this particular
Dimension. Steadily, taking his time and conserving his energy, he began to swim towards the smoke
columns.
It was well over an hour before what lay at the base of the columns lifted over the horizon. Drifting
sluggishly on the sea, five ships were burning. Around them like scum on a stagnant pond floated a wide
circle of wreckageтАФspares, rigging, planking, chests and boxes, overturned boats, human bodies. Blade
was elated. Here was a better chance of survival than swimming about aimlessly in the sea. He quickened
his strokes. In a few more minutes, he reached the fringes of the circle, climbed on to the bottom of an
overturned boat and looked more closely at the burning ships.
He now noticed that they were of two distinctly different kinds. Two of them were large,
broad-beamed merchantman types, with high castles fore and aft and bluff bows. As far as he could tell
from what he could see through the smoke and what the battle had left standing, they had possessed two
masts, with two or possibly three square sails on each.
The other three ships were smaller, low-slung, with jutting bows apparently ending in rams. They also
had two masts, but lanteen-rigged, and there were definitely oar ports in their low sides amidships.
Merchantmen and war galleysтАФtwo distinct types. Two distinct sides perhaps? And with all five
ships on fire, and wreckage and bodies littering the sea, that suggested a recent battle. Blade found
himself scanning the horizon again. The survivors of such a battle, if any, might not be welcome company
for a man naked and unarmed. It was time to see what he could scrounge in the way of survival gear
from the flotsam spread out over more than a square mile of ocean.
The boat was far too heavy in its waterlogged condition for Blade to right it by himself. But there
were plenty of floating spars trailing rigging and still half-wrapped in sails. Kicking hard with his feet, he
pushed two such together, added a third, then tied them together with as much rope as he could salvage
without a knife to cut it. After half an hour's work, he had a ramshackle raft, three feet wide and about
fifteen feet long. It rode half-submerged, like a floating log. But it saved him from having to swim or tread
water continuously. And in the course of assembling his raft, he found a small piece of timber that
balanced well enough in his hand to make a serviceable club.
The sun was noticeably lower in the sky now. One of the galleys finally dipped its bow under and
sank with a great hissing as the fires were drowned and a great bubbling and gurgling as the last of the air
escaped from the vanishing hull. Bits of charred wood popped to the surface in the disturbed water it left
behind. One of the merchantmen was also visibly lower in the water. The sight of the sinking ship and the
thought of oncoming night reminded Blade of the need to get himself a better weapon than the improvised
club and, if possible, clothing as well. In the darkness, any survivors of the battle returning to the scene
would probably be in a "strike first and ask questions afterwards" frame of mind. Blade didn't blame
them, but neither did he want to be a helpless victim. He slid off the raft and swam toward the nearest of
the floating boxes and chests. He hoped it hadn't belonged to the captain's mistress and so was full of her
cheap jewelry and by now thoroughly waterlogged cosmetics.
The first box he opened was far from useless, though not quite as useful as one containing weapons.
It held bolts of coarse, garishly colored cloth, like burlap bags dyed purple, bright blue, red-orange.
Trade goods for some primitive tribes somewhere on the remote shores of the ocean? Blade could not
help speculating about the people of this Dimension, little evidence though he had as yet to go on. He
appropriated the blue cloth and with a good deal of effortтАФit was tougher than he had
anticipatedтАФimprovised a loincloth and a rough hood for his head and shoulders, which were already
beginning to sting from their exposure to the sun.
He was no longer naked, but he was still practically weaponless, and there were other boxes and