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

Clumsy though they were, their frantic efforts pivoted the boat around.
The boats met bow to bow with a crash and a shock that threw practically everybody in both off
their feet with curses and a clatter of weapons. Practically everybodyтАФexcept Blade. Before the pirate
crew could regain their feet, he was over the side of their boat, flourishing both his weapons.
The pirate leader had been ready to lead his men into the enemy's boat, so he was the first to die.
Blade's longer weapon and immensely longer reach gave him a decisive advantage. The pirate leader
died with the rapier jutting out the back of his neck while his own cutlass whistled through the air futile
inches short of Blade. Another pirate lunged forward past the leader. Blade kicked him in the stomach
and laid open his throat with a slash of the dagger while jerking his rapier free to confront a third
opponent.
This one bobbed and weaved, making three of Blade's thrusts miss by inches. Then the pirate sprang
in and under the rapier, bringing his cutlass down in a whistling slash that missed taking off Blade's arm
but crashed into the guard of the rapier so hard that it flew out of Blade's hand and over the side. But the
pirate was off balance for a moment, long enough for Blade to thrust the dagger into his stomach, then
snatch the cutlass out of the air as the man's hand unclasped. Almost with the same motion he slashed
down to take off the head of a fourth pirate trying to get around the dying man.
He had killed four men in something under thirty seconds, and now the men in the boat behind him
were waking from their amazement and crowding forward. But a moment later they had their own battle
to fight. Out of the corner of his eye Blade saw the second pirate boat sweeping in. With a crash it
smashed into the merchant sailors' boat, pushing it away from the first pirate boat. With yells and howls
its crew hurled themselves on their opponents.
Blade was too busy to watch any more of that. He was alone in the bow of the first boat now, alone
against eight or ten armed and furious pirates. The cutlass was shorter and heavier than the rapier, but it
had an edge as well as a point. He chopped down with it like a butcher chopping meat while the dagger
flickered in and out. The pirates could only get at him one or two at a time without going over the side.
One bolder or more imaginative type tried that. But as the man rolled himself over the side of the boat
into the water, Blade parried a thrust with his dagger, slashed his current opponent across the belly with a
cutlass stroke, and leaped across the falling body to bring the cutlass up, over, and down on the bold
one's back. He felt the blade chop through the spine. The man went limp and rolled into the water with a
splash, vanishing like a lead statue.
There were eleven bodies in the boat when Blade finished, and the bottom was awash two inches
deep in blood. If there had been any survivors of the crew, they had thrown themselves over the side and
thrashed frantically off into the darkness to get away from this monster that had hurled himself upon them.
Gradually, as the fury of battle faded from his mind, Blade became aware of someone calling.
"Hoy, friend! Be ye hurt? By Druk's coral trident, that were fightin' like none ever seen!" Blade
turned about and saw Brora standing in his own boat some twenty yards away, surrounded by the
survivors of his own men. Another thirty yards beyond, the second pirate boat was limping off, only two
or three raggedly plied oars on each side in action, and blood visible on some of the oarsmen. Brora saw
Blade looking, and grinned savagely. "Aye, they be goin'. We were hard at it for a bit, but we took six or
seven o' them to four of us. Then they saw what ye'd done o'er there and that were enough for 'em. Hold
where ye be, friend. We'll come clean those sharks out o' their boat and take it for our own."
After the dead pirates had been stripped of usable gear and clothing and dumped over the side, the
merchant sailors redistributed themselves among the two boats. While this was going on, Brora drew
Blade as much out of earshot as possible and looked hard at him, with a faint smile on his weatherbeaten
face.
"From the south, ye say?"
Blade shrugged. "As much as any place. I'm a footloose type by nature."
"And a fighter. I've seen no sailor who could fight like that, tho' we do reckon ourselves fair tough in
any scrap."
"I wasn't a sailor. Down southтАФ" Blade hoped there was enough of a "south" in this Dimension to