"John Norman - Gor 06 - Raiders of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

flat; its belly, facing the bowman, is half-rounded; it is something lika an
inch and a half
wide and an inch and a quarter thick in the center; it has considerable force
and
requires considerable strength to draw; many men, incidentally, even some
warriors, cannot draw the bowy; nine of the arrrows can be fired aloft before
the
first falls again to the earth; at point-blank range it can be fired
completely
through a four-inch beam; at two hundered yards it can pin a man to a wall; at
four hundred yards it can kill the huge, shambling bosk; its rate of fire is
nineteen arrows in a Gorean Ehn, about eighty Earth seconds; and a skilled
bowman, but not an extradordinary one, is expected to be able to place these
nineteen arrows in on Ehn into a target, the size of a man, each a hit, at a
range
of some two hundred and fifty yards. Yet, as a weapon, it has serious
disadvantages, and on Gor the crossbow, inferior in accuracy, range and rate
of
fire, with its heavy cable and its leaves of steel, tends to be generally
favored.
The long bow cannot well be used except in a standing, or at least kneeling,
position, thus making more of a target of the archer; the long bow is
difficult to
use from a saddle; it is impractical in close quarters, as in defensive
warfare of in
fighting from room to room; and it cannot be kept set, loaded like a firearm,
as
can the crossbow; the crossbow is the assassinтАЩs weapon, par excellence;
further, it might be mentioned that, although it takes longer to set the
crossbow,
a weaker man, with, say, his belt claw or his winding gear, can certainly
manage
to do so; accordingly, for every man capable of drawing a warriorтАЩs long bow
there will be an indefinite number who can use the crossbow; lastly, at
shorter
distances, the crossbow requires much less skill for accuracy than the long
bow.
I smiled to myself.
It is not difficult to see why, popularly, the crossbow should be regarded
as a generally more efficient weapon that the long bow, in spite of being
inferior
to it, in the hands of an expert, in range, accuracy and rate of fire. Well
used,
the long bow is a far more devastating weapon than its rival, the crossbow;
but
few men had the strenght and eye to use it well; I prided myself on my skill
with
the weapon.
I paddled along, gently, kneeling on the rushes of my small, narrow craft.
It is the weapon of a peasant, I heard echoing in my mind, and again