"Eric Van Lustbader - Sunset Warrior 5 - Dragons on the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lustbader Eric van)

Only Moichi was in motion, striding among them, screaming in their ears, shoving them this way and that.
And still the building tsunami transfixed them. Then one among them came to life, moving to the
mainmast, hauling with all his slight weight, his dark almond eyes sliding from Moichi's face to the rapidly
unfurling sheet. It was the lone Bujun among them, a man who had kept to himself so completely
throughout the voyage that Moichi could not even recall his name.

'The Oruboros curse you!' Moichi shouted as he and the Bujun struggled with the mainsail. 'You'll do as I
say or die!'

Perhaps they felt the proximity of their deaths or perhaps it was the example of the grim-faced Bujun
hauling mightily on the rigging that galvanized them. In any event, they threw off their stupor and bent to
their task, moving as one to deploy the flapping mainsail, which moaned in protest as it was raised into
the brunt of the storm.

Now Moichi left the Bujun to work them, and he returned to the high poop deck, bounding toward the
ashen-faced tillerman. 'Into the wind!' he shouted into the man's tense face. 'By God and all that's holy,
we'll be swamped in a moment if you can't do it!'

Moichi would not turn around, but he could feel the approach of the tsunami, feeling its vibrations, dark
and deadly, rushing closer as each precious second raced by.

Bug-eyed in terror, the tillerman cried, 'You're mad! You'll turn us right into the path of the wavefront!
We'll be sucked down for sure!'

In desperation, Moichi threw the tillerman aside and, lifting his head, called for the Bujun. The mainsail
was up and bowed, catching the lashing wind. If only the Bujun cloth would not rip in the typhoon's
violence.

The small, almond-eyed man bounded up the companionway, and the instant his hands gripped the tiller,
Moichi could feel the ship respond. He looked hard into the Bujun's eyes, saw only mute concentration
as the man fought with him to turn the Tsubasa fully into the wind before the filled mainsail capsized them.
Behind them, the tsunami was rushing at them, building even higher, creaming and bubbling like a
cauldron at its serpentine crest. Moichi risked a glance over his shoulder. The wavefront was the deepest
black within the enormous cradle of its rising bulk.

Sweating like beasts of burden, digging their heels into the slick deck boards, Moichi and the slim Bujun
dragged on the recalcitrant tiller. The violent sea had the Tsubasa and it did not want to give her up.
Grunting with their effort, their lungs hot bellows, they heaved on the tiller, and slowly, agonizingly slowly
the craft began to give grudging way, shifting through the water, fighting the wind, the wildly fluctuating
cross-currents and the relentless tide. Turning to port, always to port, the two men struggled, their teeth
ground together, their shoulder muscles bunched, their chests expanding like sails full out.

But now their world was filled with the rumble of the tsunami over and above the wail of the storm, and
Moichi knew that it was possible they had left it too late, that the mainsail full out would not now provide
enough extra speed to allow them to cleave the wavefront, that they would all go down, broken like the
timbers that would splinter all around them. He did not want to end up like seaweed, adrift on the tides.

'By God, put your soul into it, lad!' he cried into the Bujun's ear. 'Everything you have now! Everything!'