"Jack vance - Tschai 2 - Servants of the Wankh" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

easy method to scale the walls, and he doubted if the Green Chasch would go to
vast trouble for the trivial pleasure of slaughtering a few men.
The old brown sun hung low in the west; the shadows of Reith and Traz and
Ylin-Ylan stretched long across the top of the butte. The girl turned away from
her contemplation of the east. She watched Traz and Reith for a moment, then
slowly, almost reluctantly, crossed the sandstone surface and joined them. "What
are you looking at?"
Reith pointed. The Green Chasch on their leap-horses were visible now to the
naked eye: dark motes hopping and bounding in bone-jarring leaps.
Ylin-Ylan drew her breath. "Are they coming for us?"
"I imagine so."
"Can we fight them off? What of our weapons?"
"We have sandblasts* on the raft. If they climbed the cliffs after dark they
might do some damage. During daylight we don't need to worry."
Ylin-Ylan's lips quivered. She spoke in an almost inaudible voice. "If I
return to Cath, I will hide in the farthest grotto of the Blue Jade garden and
never again appear. If ever I return."
Reith put his arm around her waist; she was stiff and unyielding. "Of course
you'll return, and pick up your life where it left off."
"No. Someone else may be Flower of Cath; she is welcome ... So long as she
chooses other than Ylin-Ylan for her bouquet."
The girl's pessimism puzzled Reith. Her previous trials she had borne with
stoicism; now, with fair prospects of returning home, she had become morose.
Reith heaved a deep sigh and turned away.
The Green Chasch were no more than a mile distant. Reith and Traz drew back
to attract no notice in the event that the Chasch were unaware of their
presence. The hope was soon dispelled. The Green Chasch bounded up to the base
of the butte, then, dismounting from their horses, stood looking up the cliff
face. Reith, peering over the side, counted forty of the creatures. They were
seven and eight feet tall, massive and thick-limbed, with pangolin-scales of
metallic green. Under the jut of their crania their faces were small, and, to
Reith's eyes, like the magnified visage of a feral insect. They wore leather
aprons and shoulder harness; their weapons were swords which, like all the
swords of the Tschai, seemed long and unwieldy, and these, eight and ten feet
long, even more so. Some of them armed their catapults; Reith ducked back to
avoid the flight of bolts. He looked around the butte for boulders to drop over
the side, but found none.
Certain of the Chasch rode around the butte, examining the walls. Traz ran
around the periphery, keeping watch.
All returned to the main group, where they muttered and grumbled together.
Reith thought that they showed no great zest for the business of scaling the
wall. Setting up camp, they tethered their leap-horses, thrust chunks of a dark
sticky substance into the pale maws. They built three fires, over which they
boiled chunks of the same substance they had fed the leap-horses, and at last



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