"Tepper, Sheri S - A Plague Of Angels - plangel4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

392 Sheri S. Tepper

Arakny spoke of weapons and Ellel and an earth enslaved under a tyrant once more, just now when all tyrants were gone.
"I hope there'll be enough humans left alive to celebrate our funerals," said Mother. ~'I had hoped to live yet awhile."
By dawn, most of the warriors were equipped with helmets with padding over the ears, and the best marksmen were arrayed nearest the walker lines. The ax was not a traditional ArtemisJan weapon, but every man and woman in the country knew how to fell trees and split wood, so there were axes aplenty in the Artemisian host. The battle began with a slow practice of marksmanship, during which the warriors of Artemisia discovered how difficult it was to hit the eyes of something that could move as fast as the walkers did. It was not long before the doctors of the Artemisians had many wounded to treat, and many who were past treating.
The gangers, meantime, had come up the canyon wall to the slope beneath the Place of Power. All the fire weapons the gangers had were distributed among the front rank, and as soon as it was light enough, the assault began.
Deep in the forest to the west a dozen walkers moved in swift pursuit of three Heroes. At the mouth of a vertically walled arroyo, the Heroes turned tail and fled, using the full speed of their horses to take them out of reach of the walkers. By this time, the only motivation the walkers retained was to destroy the prey before them. Guarding the wall was a distant duty to which they would return when this task was over. Looking neither right nor left, the walkers ran down the arroyo, keeping the Heroes in sight.
At a narrow turn in the canyon, the Heroes vanished. At that same turn, a sound from above brought the walkers' eyes up too late. Behind a fragile barricade of logs, stones had been piled, and now the ropes holding the barricade had been chopped through. The stones came down, knocking others loose on the slope below them to create an avalanche that buried the walkers beneath it. One of them struggled at the edge, like an ant, buried to its chest but with its arms still free. With incredible strength, it began to pull itself from beneath the stones.
A Hero rode back to the stone pile, cut off the arms, then cut off the head. The walker still lived. Its red eyes still gleamed, the arms still moved {ff themselves, scrabbling.
"They're still alive under there," the Hero called up the hill. "Eventually, they're going to get out!"
"I know," said the giant at the top of the hill. "But the rocks will hold them for a while."
Methodically, he began piling stones behind another cradle, to await the arrival of the next victims.


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS 393

To the south, walkers followed bears into deep, dark, much-ramified caves from which the Bears emerged by other exits, leaving the walkers lost in darkness below, their infrared vision useless where all was chill stone. Others followed moose, who decoyed them far up into high meadows beside marshy lakes where they sank deep into the ooze, unable to extricate themselves. Walkers, the animals told one another eagerly, delighted at the knowledge, could not swim.
Still, there were bears who did not return, moose who did not return. Their numbers fell faster than the number of walkers. Animals had only their natural fleetness as protection. They were as overmatched by the walkers as they always had been by weapon-bearing men. It was not a fair fight. Those who had designed the walkers had not thought in terms of fair fights.
Below the southern wall, a frantic Coyote leaped and darted on three legs, one dangling uselessly, barely keeping out of a persistent walker's hands. He tripped and rolled, coming to rest with an uncontrollable yelp of pain when the shattered bone encountered an outcropping.
"About time," he mumbled to himself dazedly, catching sight of a troll form looming over the walker's shoulder. "Someone mentioned our getting helps"
"Talk!" grunted Bear, as he punished the walkers with great blows of his claws before turning to flee. "Fight more. Talk less."
Coyote did not reply. His fighting days were past. His talking days as well, it seemed. The walker was getting up again. They seemed always to get up again. The troll was too far away to be of immediate help. He put his head between his paws and waited for the walker to deliver the final blow.
On his way past, Bear scooped him up with one huge and bleeding paw and thundered down the slope into a canyon, where he lcd the pursuing walker into the jaws of a waiting wivem.
"Thanks," muttered Coyote to Bear, his vision blurring in and out, like fog.
"Anytime," said the wivern, munching.

North of the walls, the monsters fought with claw and jaw, with whipping tail and biting talon. Fire belched from dragon maws; huge clubs thudded to the earth with monstrous regularity, each blow signifying another walker crushed. Though they seemed for a time imperi, ious to the walkers' bonebreaking blows and untroubled by wounds that would kill ordinary creatures, slowly they, too, began to weaken.
Not soon enough for the walkers, who began to keen, a sound their creators would have recognized as one of frustration. Walkers had been built to deal


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Sheri S. Tepper

with creatures more powerful than these! They had programs and weapons they had not yet used, programs that had been glossed and covered with others, inhibitions and taboos that both Jark III and Ellel had inflicted upon them. Now, faced with the possibility, however remote, of losing a battle, those inhibitions began to flake away, a bit at a time, gradually revealing what lay beneath.

While in Fantis, Abasio had managed to avoid real fighting for some years, and he found himself woefully out of practice, praying to someone or something that the walkers confronting him wouldn't make what he thought of as The Noise until he, Abasio, could get Tom out of reach. So long as the walkers confined themselves to using their hands, feet, and bodies only, he might manage to stay alive. This thought had no sooner occurred to him than one of the walkers kicked Abasio's legs from under him and then raised its armored foot to crush Abasio's skull. One of the gangers flung himself at the walker, knocking him aside. Before the thing could retaliate, a beam from the top of Gaddi House decapitated it, as well as several other walkers who were fortuitously grouped just behind it. The bodies went on moving, however, striking out blindly in every direction, and several desperate moments went by before Abasio got Tom free of them, somewhat battered and bloodied in the fray.
Tom set up his device on an outcropping of rock, and while he twiddled with it, Abasio and a dozen gangers surrounded him. One of the men handed Abasio a power lance he'd picked up from some fallen ganger, and he faced outward, wishing Tom would accomplish something better than he had managed thus far. Every now and then Tom would hit a frequency that made one or more walkers explode with a loud noise, a stink, and a gout of fire. The explosions seemed to occur at random, some nearby, some farther away. Some walkers exploded while they were attacking, but some that were uninvolved exploded as well. It wasn't good enough. The humans were tiring even as the walkers seemed to be getting better and better at killing them!

From the Gaddi House roof, Mitty supervised the use of the weapons he had brought there, jumping about from one to another, advising, experimenting, cursing, and pulling circuits apart, only to reconnect them and try again.
Berkli watched him.
"Mitty," he said tentatively.
Mitty waved a hand and went back to his weapons.
"Mitty," said Berkli again.


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Mitty put down the tool he had been using and came over. "What'?"