"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 25 - Torian Pearls." - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

"We can indeed hope for an end to the anger of the gods," said Paor with a sigh. "I wish we could do
more than hope."

They rode on in silence for another hour. Then the horizon ahead began to show squat black shapes. In
a few more minutes they were in sight of the camp of the Red People of the Kargoi.

Chapter 6
 The camp was laid out in a circle, a circle formed by more than three hundred immense wagons. Each
wagon was a high-sided rectangular box, about thirty feet long and ten feet wide, set on four pairs of
large solid wheels. The two pairs in front were smaller than the pairs in the rear. They were attached
directly to the yoke and could swivel to steer the wagon. Each wagon was covered by a straight-sided
canopy of heavy canvas.

The wagons formed a double circle nearly a mile in diameter. Between the inner and outer circles was a
space about a hundred feet wide. In that space Blade saw tents with decorated poles from which
banners flew, campfires whose smoke reeked of dung, blacksmiths and wheelwrights and other
craftsmen hard at work. Warriors greased boots and weapons, mothers nursed babies, older children ran
about, naked or wearing only leather breechclouts.

In the center of the circle Blade saw a solid mass of drends. They were unmistakably the same species
as the beasts the warriors were riding, but obviously bred for pulling instead of riding. They were half
again as large as the riding drends, thicker in the legs, and with only one blunt point on each horn. Their
necks and shoulders looked as massive as the Rock of Gibralter and were galled and darkened by yoke
and harness.

Blade started to count the wagon drends, reached three hundred, then gave up. With six or eight drends
to each of the wagons, plus spares, that meant between two and three thousand wagon drends.

Two or three riding drends were tethered to each of the wagons in the outer circle. At least twenty
mounted warriors were riding slowly around the whole circle. Blade noticed that each carried a staff with
a red pennant on the end and a small skin drum slung on one hip. Paor called one of the riders to him and
sent the man off to bring word of a stranger's arrival to the other baudzi.

Paor and Blade rode on toward the wagons. Halfway around the circle, a party of nearly naked men
was at work under the supervision of several guards. They were pulling away piles of brush from
between two pairs of wagons, leaving a gap. Half a dozen mounted warriors rode in through the gap and
started herding the wagon drends out to graze. The great beasts lumbered out slowly, swaying like
drunkards and making little hoots and muttering noises from deep in their throats.

Blade had somehow expected that the wagons of the Red People would be painted that color. The
wagon bodies and wheels were actually dirty brown or gray, and the canopies were ugly blotched
patterns of brown and green. Ugly, but also good camouflage. The wagons would be hard to see from
far away, and at night they would be almost invisible from any distance. Only the wheel hubs were
painted red.

Definitely the Kargoi seemed to be a people well organized to search out a new homeland and fight to
win and hold it when they arrived. Blade began to suspect he was in for a more than usually interesting
time, here among the Kargoi in this Dimension of drowned lands and spreading swamps.