"John Norman - Gor 16 - Guardsman of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

behind the stem castle. The oars of the Tina lifted and slid partly inboard. The ship, with its
momentum, drifted forward, south along the chain. We heard the chain grate then, on the hull, below
the starboard shearing blade.
"What did you hear?" I asked.
We looked over the side, at the chain, suspended some six inches here above the water, and at
the water, flickering in
the lantern's light. "They were here," said Callimachus. "I am sure of it. Do not enter the
light."
I drew back.
"It is hopeless," he said, dismally. "They may come and go as they please, withdrawing at our
approach."
"There is little we can do about it," I said.
"Extinguish the lanterns," said Callimachus. "Wait! Bucklers and swordsl Bucklers and
swords, Lads!''
Almost at the instant that he had spoken grappling iron looped over the bulwarks and snapped
back, the points anchoring in the wood. We saw tension in the irons as men climbed the ropes
secured to them. But they were met, as dark shapes at the bulwarks, screaming and cursing, by fierce
defenders, thrusting them back with bucklers, darting steel into their bodies. They were emerging
from longboats and must climb up and over the bulwarks; they could not, bulwark to bulwark, leap
to our deck; the advantages were fully ours; only one reached the deck, and we threw his lifeless
body, thrust through in a dozen places, back into the Vosk, after its retreating fellows.
Callimachus wiped his sword on his cloak. "Additional insult have they done to us," he
grinned. "Do they think we are an undefended merchantman, to assail us so boldly, so foolishly?"
"As you slew a man," I said, "you cried out with pleasure."
"Did I?" asked Callimachus.
"Yes," I said.
"When you, too, drove your blade into the body of a man, I thought you, too, cried out with
pleasure," said Call'tmachus.
"I could not have done so," I said.
"You did," grinned Callimachus.
"I do not recall it," I said.
"In the press of battle," said Callimachus, "it is sometimes hard to be aware of all that
transpires."
"You seem exhilarated," I said.
"I am," said he, "and so, too, seem you."
"No," I said, uncertainly, "it cannot be."
"But it is," said Callimachus.
"I do not think I know myself," I said.
"You are a man," said Callimachus. "Perhaps it is time that you made your own
acquaintance."
"We were as fierce as they," I said, wonderingly, "as swift, as vicious."
"It would seem so," smiled Callimachus.
I was silent.
"Do you fear to look upon the hunter, and the killer, in yourself?" he asked.
I did not speak.
He clapped me on the shoulders. "We have now, I suspect," said he, "taught the men of
Ragnar Voskjard some respect for honest men."
"Yes," I said, "let us think of it in such terms."
 "Do you not wonder, sometimes," asked he, "why honest men, honest folk, such as ourselves,
permit pirates, and such, to exist."