"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 02 - Saber and Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

The slaves had stopped the moment the sound had, standing like fleshy posts in
the deck. Megan raised her head, squinting at the horizon. There were clouds,
a thicker haze on the edge of the sea. Then a tiny doll-sized flash of
blue-white, horizontal lightning.

I never was much good at judging weather on a sea, Megan thought. But ...

The captain stared for a long moment through the spy-glass, then spun on her
heel, shouting.

"Get 'em below! Strike all sail but the jib, wind's comin'! Uraccano."

The bosun's pipe shrilled, sending sailors clambering frantically to pull in
sail before the wind hit. The slaves were urged back into the hold with a
shouted command, and when they didn't move fast enough, a lashing. Megan
blinked at the darkness, eyes refusing to adjust, watching the square of light
and air above as the sailors quickly snapped locks into place and swarmed back
up to the deck. Slanting across the tiny rectangles of sky, she could see the
ropes shaking as people scrambled in the rigging. The hatch cover rattled onto
its fittings with a hollow boom that echoed through the sudden darkness,
leaving only a patchwork gleam through the grillwork in the center of the
wooden circle. A mallet sounded a hollow tock as they hammered the securing
wedges home. With the hatch shut and battened, dark and smell closed in.

"They're trying to run on jibs from the feel," she murmured to Jaipahl, next
to her.

Sailcloth boomed above them, moving in the gusts that brought a stray jet of
cooler air. The Flycatcher heeled over, sending Megan sliding against her
chains and the rough wood, tearing the scabs on her back loose, bilge gurgling
below. Someone cried out in the dark and a fight was starting further down the
coffle. The wood of the ship cracked and groaned as she righted and ran before
the wind.

"I believe we have a wind," Jaipahl said calmly, loud over the noise.

Shkai'ra Mek Kermak's-kin grunted and slapped at the mosquitoes again,
crouching on the sandspit and leaning on her scabbarded saber, long ringers
wrapped around the bone hilt. The salt marsh whispered on either side, and the
shouts and crashes from the villagers salvaging the ship echoed loud across
it. The longshore swamp smelled of rot, and the overcast rolled low and
threatening over air that shimmered with heat and moisture, over oil-smooth
sea the color of grey bread mold. More knocking sounds, as the natives broke
up the shipwreck with stone-headed hammers. They had stripped out everything
of use, and now they were taking the remainder apart for the stout oak timber.

Miserable tub, Shkai'ra thought, spitting in the direction of the wreck.

It had been a three-master, a freighter out of the Kahab Sea; from Kyuba,