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

"Captain, I'm sorry about your men. I wouldn't have hurt any of them if they hadn't attacked me. I
don't think most of them are too seriously hurt to fight.
"But I do owe you something for what I did to them. Give me some clothes and weapons, and I'll
stand with you against the pirates."
The captain looked from Blade to the archers, then toward the horizon, then back to Blade. His head
jerked in a brief nod. "All right. But HemiGohar help you if you're lying."
"I'm not lying about being a fighting man," said Blade. The captain looked at the sailors either still
unconscious or slowly picking themselves up, then somehow managed to laugh.
"No, you're not lying about that."


Chapter 3
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Everyone promptly forgot about Blade for a while. The captain was clearly determined to be sure all his
own men were armed and ready to fight before he let Blade loose among them. Blade didn't blame the
man, but he didn't like the prospect of facing the pirates armed only with the sword and the club and
wearing nothing but his bare skin.
The pirates themselves were no particular surprise to Blade. Virtually every civilization trading by sea
found pirates preying on that trade sooner or later. At times pirates grew so prosperous that they became
almost like independent war-like states. Blade remembered the pirates who'd fought a full-scale war
against theKingdomofRoyth .
So the seven ships were a convoy, sailing together for mutual protection. The seventh ship astern was
probably an escorting warship. Blade looked aft, and saw the black ship pulling out to port. He'd
guessed right. She was low and rakish, with lateen sails on both masts. Though she carried plenty of sail,
she was clearly designed to be easily rowed as well. Twenty oars were already in action on the side
Blade could see, and armed men were gathering amidships. Sunlight blazed from the metal of armor and
weapons.
The warship now came racing up the port side of the convoy, red oars beating fast and foam curling
up silver at her bow. The shape of the bow wave hinted at a ram lurking just below the surface. On the
stern someone pounded away at two large drums, and someone else signaled with a long pole with a
colored disk on either end.
Meanwhile, the crew of Blade's ship were arming themselves with a speed and efficiency that
suggested they were used to this sort of thing. Blade hoped they were, or he might wind up regretting his
alliance with them. The weapon racks on the aftercastle emptied swiftly. From below someone began
handing up armor. The two archers got scale-mail jackets like the captain's. Nearly everyone else got a
coat of boiled leather and a helmet with a jointed tailpiece to protect the neck.
Two men staggered up through the hatch, carrying an iron pot filled with hot coals, and emptied it
over the side. Other men who'd finished pulling on their armor were scurrying about, setting out buckets
of water and sand, axes, and more spears. Three fresh men took over at the tiller. Beside them a sailor
laid out vials, bottles, and strips of cloth for bandages.
Blade had just about decided that he really was going to have to fight this battle in his skin when
someone ran up to the foc'sle and threw a bundle at his feet. "Here, man! Cap'n says you put this on."
Blade found trousers, a linen shirt, and a helmet. The helmet fit perfectly and the trousers were snug but
wearable. The shirt was hopeless and Blade wound up wrapping it around his left arm as a protection
against knife thrusts. He could have done better, but in most kinds of fighting he could make his great
speed a substitute for armor.
As Blade finished dressing, the black galley cut across the bow of his ship, then backed her oars to
drop astern. She passed between Blade's ship and the one to port, then took station between the two
lines of merchant ships. All the men on the galley's deck were heavily armed. Half of them carried bows
and quivers, while most of the rest carried spears or two-handed swords.