"Tom Purdom - The Tree Lord of Imeten" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

Ben Keler, his outraged bellow had frozen everyone standing in the street.
The arrows had flown from his bow as if he were a vengeful god hurling
thunderbolts. He hated deathтАФeven when he had dealt it himself, even
when he wanted to kill the men who had dealt it to his friends.
He peered underneath the curve of the front tread. Raising his eyes from
the body, he inspected the open ground between the tractor and the
buildings a hundred meters away. To his nearsighted eyes the buildings
looked fuzzy. The plastic windows looked like black holes, and if he had
never seen them before, he wouldn't have known the eight two-story
buildings on his left were gray metal, and the thirty one-story buildings on
his right were gray stone. To him, the huge bulk of the spherical
orbit-to-ground vehicle two kilometers away was a shapeless black cloud.
The forest beyond the vehicle was a dark smear which could have been
anything.
The only detectable sounds were the wind and the faint roar of the
waterfall at the end of the plateau. He assumed no one was working in the
farm on the other side of the buildings, since he couldn't hear voices and
both the tractors were in this shed with him, but if they had been working he
couldn't have seen them.
Most of the people in the settlement were hiding. After Emile's gang
killed him, they would creep into the open, accept the new leadership, and
continue their lives until the next struggle for power broke out. What else
could they do? If everyone could be that apathetic about who played the roll
of leader, his father and Walt Sumi would still be alive.
It had now been several minutes since a rifle bullet had last cracked
above the tractor. It had been almost an hour since they had last tried to
rush him.
The shed he was hiding in was isolated from the rest of the settlement. A
sheer cliff protected his back, and they could attack him from the front only
by sniping at him or by rushing him across open, leveled ground. The arrow
in Joe Persa's heart had apparently taught them even a hail of rifle bullets
couldn't keep him from killing whoever volunteered to make the assault.
He slid behind the tractor and crouched along it toward the other end.
The shadows of the buildings had indicated it was now early afternoon, five
hours since the sun had first risen above the western horizon. He assumed
they would now wait four more hours and rush him in the dark, but he
couldn't be sure. He had to watch both ends of the tractor if he wanted to
cover all the ground in front of him. He didn't want to be taken by surprise.
When he died, he would fall hurling death.
He was a deadly archer in spite of his eyes. He had killed or seriously
injured at least two others besides Joe. His father had insisted he get along
without glasses and learn how to compensate. They couldn't be dependent,
his father had felt, on the technology of a human civilization which was now
eighteen light years away and which none of them, hopefully, would ever
contact again. This isolated plateau on Delta Pavonis II was going to be
their entire world for many decades; if they wanted to survive they should
use, as much as possible, only what could be grown or built here, or the
equipment from the starship which wouldn't wear out before they could
expect to build replacements.
He straightened up cautiously and glanced over the top of the tractor.