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

They passed over more herds. Then they passed over villages surrounded by checkerboard fields of
growing crops. Then larger villages, with smoke spiraling up from shops and forges, and roads winding
away toward the horizon. Each time they saw the people explode into frantic activity as they saw the
Looter machine bearing down on them. Each time they were past and gone too fast to see what
happened. Krimon's face grew more strained each time. It was obvious that he was fighting a battle
inside himself.

Then suddenly the horizon turned gray white with mountains of billowing clouds. Krimon sat up
straighter.

"Clouds over the Gorge, Mazda." With a finger that trembled slightly, he pointed at the screens.
"There-on the Plain of War. That is where we built the New City of the People."

Blade had already seen the little cluster of buildings inside its earthen wall, and the machine was curving
toward it as Krimon spoke. Blade could not keep his mouth from growing dry with excitement, or sweat
from breaking out on his forehead. In a few minutes he would step forth among people who knew him.
Even more important, he would step forth as Mazda, the godlike being who had for better or worse
made these people what they were now. And above all, he would see his son.
 Blade brought the war machine down so low that a thrown rock or even a high-flying chicken could
have hit it. He slowed until they were moving barely faster than a strong man could walk. On the screens
he noticed that some of the people who had dashed off in panic at first were slowing down and stopping
to look back. This was a Looter machine, but it was behaving like none they had ever seen or heard of!
Curiosity was beginning to compete with their fear.

The New City of the People hardly deserved its grand name. It was only another village, larger than any
Blade had seen so far, but holding at most five hundred to a thousand people. It was surrounded by a
sod and gravel wall about eight feet high. Two more cross-walls divided its interior into three sections.

"The center part holds the House of the King," said Krimon, pointing. "He-you're not going to land right
in the King's yard?"

"Why not?"

The war machine floated in over the walls so low that the sentries on top had to jump for their lives to
keep from being knocked off. Blade slipped in over the sod roof of the King's House, stopped in midair
directly above the center of the courtyard, and settled down with a thump on the ground.

Several spears and a dozen or so arrows promptly flew at the machine and bounced off with clangs and
clatters. Krimon gasped.

"They are shooting at us, Mazda."

"Of course they're shooting at us!" said Blade. "All at once we're an easy target. They're thinking that
perhaps if they get their shots in first, they can-"

"But we're friendly!"

"I know it. You know it. But they don't know it yet. To them we're just another Looter machine, and it
takes real guts for them to do what they're doing. Let's sit quiet and wait. Sooner or later they'll realize
we're different."