"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 11 - Dimension of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

do much beyond creating a diversion to enable the woman to get away. But that should be possible with
surprise on his side.
But suddenly his chances of taking them by surprise vanished as the second woman broke from her
trance, leaped to her feet, and dashed straight toward him. As she plunged out onto the bridge, she
caught sight of Blade flattening himself in the thistles. In an instant she stopped dead, let out a wild scream
of terror, and before Blade could shout or move to stop her, she dashed to the edge of the bridge and
threw herself off. The warriors, turning at the sound of the scream and staring at the woman, also caught
sight of Blade. He saw two of them raise their spears as the leader, who had been about to fall on the
first woman, sprang to his feet and turned toward the bridge.
Blade knew that his only chance now was to get to close quarters before the spearmen could turn
him into a porcupine, then rely on his superior strength and skill. He sprang to his feet and charged
straight at the leader, whirling his mace around his head so that it was a gilded blur in the torchlight,
screaming at the top of his lungs. The leader took one tremendous leap backward, putting himself beyond
the range of Blade's savage swing. One of the other men standing over the woman wasn't so lucky.
Blade's mace smashed into his temple, and he flew through the air and landed six feet from where he
took off. His companion swung his sword up in a flashing arc, but Blade knocked it out of his hand with
one swing of the mace and smashed in his forehead on the return swing.
For a moment the other swordsmen backed off from Blade, and the spearmen had a clear shot at
him. But the spearmen were unnerved by his size and ferocity and the speed with which he had killed two
of the swordsmen. And his leaping, whirling figure made a poor target in the flickering torchlight. He felt
spears dart past his body and legs and heard them bang metallically on the road. Then he bellowed,
"Run, you fool!" to the nude woman on the ground. Without waiting to see whether she obeyed or even
heard him, he charged the spearmen, mace still whirling in one hand, a sword snatched up from one of his
victims now flashing in the other.
The first swordsman came at him, sword held low for a thrust. Blade smashed down the man's feeble
guard with the mace, then sliced the man's numbed hand from its arm with the sword. A spearman
followed, holding his spear sideways, like a quarterstaff, ready to block or strike. But he was not fast
enough to deal with Blade, who thrust with his sword to bring the spear down, then struck overhand with
the mace to shatter the man's collarbone.
Behind him Blade heard a voice bellow, "Break left, break right, pick them up!" and the semicircle of
armed men disintegrated. Two men grabbed each of the victims on the ground and carried them off. It
was not a rout, not a panic flight of broken and routed men, but an orderly retreat of trained men
responding to orders. In minutes the fourteen surviving warriors and their victims had vanished as
completely as if they had never existed. The only sign that anything unusual had disturbed the sleep of the
empty city was the four dead bodies lying on the rubble. The woman was nowhere to be found; Blade
hoped she had run away and had not been carried off by her attackers or been driven to follow her friend
into the river.
Blade had no idea of where he could find a safe place in this city. There might not be any such thing if
these marauders roamed freely all over it. Perhaps his wisest course was to leave the city entirely,
abandoning it to the marauders for good. But his curiosity was aroused. Obviously, there were at least
two kinds of people in the city, the marauders and their well-dressed opponents. The marauders seemed
to be first-class well-disciplined fighters. Their victims had no more notion of how to fight than pigs have
of computer programming. But if anybody represented a higher form of civilization around there, it was
the victims. Possibly their civilization was no longer as advanced as it had been when the city was built,
but it appeared to be more advanced than that of the marauders. And considerably more decadent, too,
judging from their helplessness.
A sudden rumble of thunder reminded Blade that he was not doing himself any good by standing
there in the open and the cold, exposed to chance spears and passing showers. He would have to get to
shelter and then worry about finding answers to the mystery of the city.
But first, some clothing. Ignoring the blood, he began stripping the tunics and kilts from his victims