"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 19 - Looters of Tharn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

"And they are moving toward the settled lands of Tharn, Mazda. They know of our existence. Sooner or
later they will fly all the way to the settled lands. Their rays will strike, people will die horribly in the metal
arms, and then the ball of flame will sweep away what is left. We cannot prevent their coming, and we
cannot survive it either."

Definitely morale in Tharn was down. With good reason, Blade had to admit. To have the Looters come
tramping along, murderous, destructive, and utterly mysterious, just when things had started to improve
for the people-it would have been demoralizing to any people.

Most of the knowledge that would have helped fight the Looters had been gone for centuries even
before Blade arrived. After the destruction of Urcit, the surviving neuters were too busy learning what
they needed to save the survivors to have time for anything else.

It looked as if the job of organizing Tharn for battle against the Looters was going to be largely in the
hands of Richard Blade.

His hands and his son's, he reminded himself. He was not only father to the people, but father to their
King. He had found strange allies in stranger dimensions, but he had never dreamed that he would find
one sprung from his own loins.

He shook his head and set his thoughts in order. "Well, Krimon, I have listened as I promised. You have
made many things clear. I now say that we must fly to the house of King Rikard, as fast as the machine
can take us. We must stop the Looters soon. Who knows what machines and what knowledge they are
taking from you in the cities they loot? And those who fear that they will someday soon march upon the
people are correct. Beings like the Looters will kill and destroy for the sheer love of killing and
destroying, unless they are stopped. For all their science they are like the Pethcines of the Lesser War."

"But this machine-"

"This machine is now a terrible weapon for us against its masters. We shall take it to King Rikard, and I
and the wisest of the people shall study it. We shall find how it may be destroyed. And then we shall
march out against the Looters, and destroy the machines one by one until there are no more of them and
Tharn is saved."

Krimon looked impressed. Blade realized he must have made the road ahead sound easy. He sighed.

He very much wished it were as easy as he had made it sound.

Chapter 12

As soon as they finished breakfast, Blade lifted the machine into the air and headed west. Krimon turned
pale as he saw the ground drop away beneath them. His prominent knuckles stood out as his hands
clenched into fists. But he said nothing, and slowly relaxed as he saw that the war machine would neither
fall down nor explode nor run away with them into the empty sky.

Blade stayed low. He had no idea how much of the machine's power supply he had used up. He didn't
want to plunge hundreds of feet to the ground if the lift-field suddenly died.

The plain rolled past beneath them, mile after mile of grass and scrawny shrubs and gentle swells and