"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 32 - Pirates of Gohar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

to close quarters over Blade's objections. Then he laid down the sword, slowly and carefully so that
everyone on deck could see him do it, and raised his right hand in a gesture of peace.
The suddenly widening eyes of the men closest to Blade gave him part of the warning, and the sound
of metal on wood behind him gave the rest. Blade whirled, bending to snatch up the sword as he did so,
and saw two sailors scrambling over the railing. They must have climbed along the hull outboard of the
railing and below Blade's angle of vision. He didn't have time to admire their agility, but he did have the
sword. This was lucky, because one of the sailors had a sword of his own and the other held a six-foot
spear with a barbed head.
Blade chopped down with the sword as hard as he could, taking off the spear's head and two feet of
the shaft. With the club he blocked a sword cut. The spearman dropped the stump of the shaft and
started to draw a knife from his belt. Before he could complete the movement Blade closed with the
swordsman, immobilized his weapon, grabbed the man, and swung him around. Blade got his living shield
into position just as the other sailor thrust hard with his knife. Fortunately he only stabbed his shipmate in
the buttocks. The first man let out a yell, struggled wildly, and cursed fluently. Blade couldn't tell if he was
cursing his enemy or his shipmate.
Blade put an end to the curses by squeezing the man's right wrist until he dropped his sword, then
picking him up like a sack of flour and heaving him off the foc'sle. The second sailor had the courage to
try facing Blade armed only with his knife, but this didn't do him any good. Blade cracked the man hard
across one knee with the back of his sword. Then he twisted the knife free and sent the knifeman flying
after his shipmate. He landed squarely on top of the swordsman, but once again the amount of noise
floating up from the main deck told Blade that both men were more or less in one piece.
Less reassuring was the fact that the main deck of the ship was now filling with armed sailors. At least
a dozen of them held spears, and two of them had bows and quivers of arrows. None of them were
armored and none of them were saying anything, but none of them looked particularly friendly either.
Blade realized he might have rather overdone the job of showing them he wasn't an easy victim. Now
he'd better start talking before one of those archers let fly, and hope they wouldn't consider his trying to
talk peace a sign of weakness.
Again he raised one hand in a peaceful gesture. This drew some harsh laughter, and one of the
archers nocked an arrow to his bow. Blade had a thoroughly unpleasant feeling that this trip to Dimension
X was about to become his shortest and possibly his last.
"No! Listen to me!" he bellowed, in a voice that carried from one end of the ship to the other. The
words formed themselves in his mind in English, but they came out in the guttural growls of the sailors.
Somehow, each time he passed from Home Dimension into Dimension X, his brain was altered so that
be both spoke and understood whatever languages he'd need there. Even Lord Leighton had several
different theories about how this happened, and nobody else had more than guesses. No matter how it
happened, Blade was glad it did. Not having to learn new languages each time he entered a new world
saved time, and here it might save his life.
All the sailors jumped at Blade's shout, but the archer also began to draw. "No, listen! I'm not your
enemy!" Blade shouted. He was also trying to decide if he should jump down on to the main deck and
attack, or jump over the side and take his chances there.
 Before the archer could finish drawing, the door to the aftercastle flew open and a short,
black-bearded man came stamping out. Unlike the rest of the crew he wore armor, a short jacket of
metal discs sewn on leather, and carried two swords. He waved one over his head so wildly that several
sailors had to jump back in order to avoid being struck. As he strode forward through the sailors, he
cursed them eloquently without raising his voice above a normal tone. By the time he was standing below
the break of the foc'sle, looking up at Blade, he had the attention of every man on deck.
While the bearded manтАФthe ship's captain, no doubt about itтАФwas cursing his crew, Blade had time
to consider how to explain himself. Apparently he'd appeared out of thin air, as if by magic, so there
wasn't much point in giving a purely natural explanation for his arrival. Sailors were a superstitious lot in
any case, and they might not accept a natural explanation even for a less spectacular arrival.