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

The Bujun trembled with the vehemence of the typhoon and the words spat out by this great bearlike
demon at his side. He had signed on to the Tsubasa to escape the endless gloom of Sha'angh'sei's
narrow crooked streets, its double-dealing, lice-ridden merchants, its evil-eyed provocateurs, its sleazy
arms dealers. It had been a mistake to leave his island home, to come to the seething continent of man.
To sail a Bujun vessel had seemed the perfect escape from Sha'angh'sei's madness. Now he was trapped
in this sea-drenched coffin! As he hauled on the tiller his white lips trembled in a prayer that had, until this
moment, been only half-remembered.

But no prayer could dispel the terrible onrush of the tsunami. It rode triumphantly above the siren shriek
of the typhoon, a sound out of all nature, a vibration rattling his clenched teeth, causing the short hairs to
stand on the back of his neck, making his drenched flesh crawl. Still, his half-numbed brain registered the
exhortations of his captain who stood side by side with him, who needed his strength to turn the ship fully
into the wind. This sense of intimacy, of comradeship was new to the Bujun, and he felt it a pleasurable
and compelling sensation. No one had ever needed him before, and he was bound and determined to
deliver up his very soul to his captain if that were what was asked of him. Shoulder to the groaning tiller,
he redoubled his efforts, grunting like a rutting animal.

The tsunami was a living being pursuing them like the hand of God, rolling and roaring like a giant in
agony, an unstoppable mailed fist bent on demolishing them all.

Down on the mid-deck, men tying off the last of the mainsail's singing lines felt cold sweat snaking down
their rigid spines. They fell to their knees where they were, vomiting and urinating without volition. Others
cried or simply prayed to gods they no longer believed in, returning unconsciously to the ways of their
forebears that they had once ridiculed for their piousness. They cried for succor, no longer believing in
their innate power as men, pleading with these long-dead gods to deliver them by a miracle.

Above them, Moichi shouted, 'Now!' in the Bujun's ear. 'Now, now, now, by the Oruboros!' And they
fought the tiller, fought the raging seas and gusting gale as Moichi willed them further to port, bending his
mind as well as his muscles to the near impossible task.

Now that special bond between captain and ship was springing up between them, and he called upon
the Tsubasa, his ship, speaking silently to her in the universal language of the sea. He cajoled her, cursed
her, caressed her and beat her, threatening her with an eternity of rot at the bottom of the sea.

And all the while he could feel the presence of the onrushing tsunami, its crest widening, higher now than
the tallest buildings of his memory, even those great arcane pyramids he and the Dai-San, when he had
been called Ronin, had ascended in the land of the Majapan.

I survived the horror of Xich Chich, Moichi thought, defeating gods more powerful than any one element.
I fought in the Kai-feng, the war against Chaos's agent, the dreaded Dolman. I destroyed the monster
Diablura in the land of the Opal Moon, resisted the deadly magical lure of the Firemask, I outfoxed the
sorceress Sardonyx, defeating her at her own diabolical game. I survived it all. I will not die here, so
close to home, in my own element! By God, I own the seas!

He raised his head to the lightning-flecked clouds. He felt the proximity of another spirit, the conjunction
of their power, battling the howling elements all around them, and he grinned, loving the whip of the wind,
the briny smell of the sea, and always the titanic struggle the ocean put to you in order to prove your
ultimate worth.

His heart beat fast and strong, and his spirit expanded, directing itself along the sleek flanks of his new