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

Three more explosions came in rapid succession, then five minutes of silence and after that three more.
Blade waited in concealment as the silence following the last three explosions grew longer and longer.
Five minutes, ten, twenty. After half an hour, Blade crawled out from under the bush, stood up, and
scanned the city again. It stood as before silent and grim. Nothing moved in its rubble-strewn streets or
buildings with windows staring like the eye-sockets of bleached skulls.

Blade headed down the ridge toward the city. He couldn't help wishing he had something more than the
sapling as a weapon. The explosions had been too powerful to think about with an easy mind. He would
have felt a damned sight more comfortable walking toward the city with a couple of light antitank rockets
or something like that slung on his back.

Oh well, they couldn't send through the computer everything he might need in a new dimension. Even if
they could, they'd need to send six porters or a Land Rover to carry the whole lot! Blade smiled for a
moment at the idea of seven stark-naked men tramping across some other-dimensional landscape,
himself in the lead and six others following with heavy packs.

The grass rose a yard high as Blade descended the ridge. Once again he had to plow through it like a
ship through pack ice, his massively muscled legs moving up and down tirelessly. His eyes continuously
scanned the city, and from time to time looked to either side and behind him. He couldn't imagine what
danger might come at him from the miles of empty, open plain. But a man in a new world seldom died
from the dangers he expected.

Blade had covered about half the distance to the city when something in the grass ahead made him stop
and look more closely. Something gleamed whitely there, reflecting the sun from among the greens and
yellow-browns of the waving grass. Blade took two more steps forward and saw the unmistakable glint
of sunlight off metal.

White, bleached bones lay scattered in the grass, the bones of human beings and horses all mixed
together. The sunlight glinted from the unrusted portions of swords, spear heads, iron-studded belts,
round helmets, the metalwork of harnesses.

Blade picked up the most intact of the belts and tied it around his waist. Then he thrust the least-rusted
of the swords into it and stood up. That made him feel better. Now he might stay alive if he ran into more
of the people whose bones littered the ground around him.

Blade crouched down again and examined the remains more closely. At once he noticed a few odd
things about them. For one thing; there were clearly three different types of people among the dead. One
type was short, almost bandy-legged, broad-framed and squat, with round skulls and wide faces. A
second was taller, some of them six feet or over, thinner, long-limbed and graceful. A third-the most
numerous-looked like the results of cross-breeding between the first two. What was even odder was that
most of the tall skeletons seemed to be those of women! The lighter bones and the pelvic girdle were
hard to mistake.

There was also something odd about the armor and weapons. There was quite a lot of metal there-good
but crudely finished wrought iron, most of it. Efficient but primitive. Yet some of the helmets, many of the
breastplates, and nearly all of the belts were made of some pale, tough, plastic-like material.

Blade picked up one of the belts and tried to snap it in his hands. He pulled at it until the muscles of his
thick arms stood out like rocks and the sweat popped out on his forehead. But he might as well have
been trying to snap a length of steel cable. He braced one of the breastplates-designed for a woman, he