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

sapling over his shoulder like a rifle.

He moved forward with long, steady strides, occasionally prodding at the ground ahead of him with the
sapling. Tangles of grass jerked at his ankles and an occasional thistlelike plant jabbed thorns into his
calves. But these slowed him only slightly. The hope of seeing something more than miles and miles of
grass from the top of the ridge pushed him on.

Beyond the ridge, the ground dropped away again, then swept out across more miles of grassland. But
the horizon was no longer a featureless line where green plain met washed-out blue sky.

On it rose a city. It sprawled across nearly half the horizon, a mass of graceful white towers mixed with
lower buildings, bridges, walls, amphitheaters-every sort of architectural shape. Everything had been
conceived and built on a soaring, monumental scale. But even from many miles away everything showed
the telltale signs of long abandonment. Windows gaped darkly, bridges sagged, here and there a wall had
collapsed and grass had already overgrown the spilled rubble. It was a beautiful city, so beautiful that
Blade involuntarily stopped to admire it. But it was also a dead city.

Blade swore and sat down. Had the computer finally hurled him into a dimension without human life?
Men-or something intelligent-had built that city, no doubt about that. But he had equally little doubt that
the builders of the city no longer lived and ruled in it.

Who did?

Perhaps no one did. Perhaps nothing moved in that city except grass waving in the wind. In any case,
Blade knew that he was not going to find out anything standing there on top of the ridge.

Blade was striding down the far slope of the ridge toward the city when he heard the sound. Like the
thunder of a distant storm, it rolled across the plains from the direction of the city. First a single sharp
clap, then a long, slowly fading rumble. Blade felt bits of grit drive into his eyes and sting his skin. The
bushes, trees, and grass danced for a long moment in something that wasn't the wind.

Somewhere not too far away, something had produced a violent shock wave. Blade doubted that it was
natural. This land seemed to be as flat as a billiard table, and just about as unlikely to produce anything
noisy and geological.

So whatever had made the shock wave was probably artificial. Blade crouched low behind a bush.
Anything or anybody able to make an explosion this powerful might also be able to detect a man miles
away.

Blade started to shift his position to where he could see out in all directions and no one could easily see
him. Another crack-boom-rumble sounded from the direction of the city. Blade scanned the horizon and
the buildings for some possible sign of where the blasts came from. No flash of flame, not even a rising
and spreading cloud of smoke. What was making the explosions, and where?

For the third time the sounds blasted their way across the plain. Watching closely, Blade saw the blast
wave kick up dust and debris in the streets of the city. There was a lot of power behind those blasts,
whatever they were. No doubt his view of the blast site itself was cut off by the mass of thousand-foot
buildings. But why no smoke clouds rising even higher into the sky? There was something increasingly
odd about those explosions, if that was what they were.