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

hulking down into toad-shaped mounds, joylessly devoured the contents of their
cauldrons. The sun dimmed behind the western haze and disappeared. Umber
twilight fell over the steppe. Anacho came away from the raft and peered down at
the Green Chasch. "Lesser Zants," he pronounced. "Notice the protuberances to
each side of the head? They are thus distinguished from the Great Zants and
other hordes. These are of no great consequence."
"They look consequential enough to me," said Reith.
Traz made a sudden motion, pointed. In one of the crevices, between two vanes
of rock, stood a tall dark shadow. "Phung!"
Reith looked through the scanscope and saw the shadow to be a Phung indeed.
From where it had come he could not guess.
It was over eight feet in height, in its soft black hat and black cloak, like
a giant grasshopper in magisterial vestments.
Reith studied the face, watching the slow working of chitinous plates around
the blunt lower section of the face. It watched the Green Chasch with brooding
detachment, though they crouched over their pots not ten yards away.
"A mad thing," whispered Traz, his eyes glittering. "Look, now it plays
tricks!"
The Phung reached down its long thin arms, raised a small boulder which it
heaved high into the air. The rock dropped among the Chasch, falling squarely
upon a hulking back.
The Green Chasch sprang up, to glare toward the top of the butte. The Phung
stood quietly, lost among the shadows. The Chasch which had been struck lay flat
on its face, making convulsive swimming motions with arms and legs.
The Phung craftily lifted another great rock, once more heaved it high, but
this time the Chasch saw the movement. Venting squeals of fury they seized their
swords and flung themselves forward. The Phung took a stately step aside, then
leaping in a great flutter of cloak snatched a sword, which it wielded as if it
were a toothpick, hacking, dancing, whirling, cutting wildly, apparently without
aim or direction. The Chasch scattered; some lay on the ground, and the Phung
jumped here and there, slashing and slicing, without discrimination, the Green
Chasch, the fire, the air, like a mechanical toy running out of control.
Crouching and shifting, the Green Chasch hulked forward. They chopped, cut;
the Phung threw away the sword as if it were hot, and was hacked into pieces.
The head spun off the torso, landed on the ground ten feet from one of the
fires, with the soft black hat still in place. Reith watched it through the
scanscope. The head seemed conscious, untroubled. The eyes watched the fire; the
mouth parts worked slowly.
"It will live for days, until it dries out," said Traz huskily. "Gradually it
will go stiff."
The Chasch paid the creature no further heed, but at once made ready their
leap-horses. They loaded their gear and five minutes later had trooped off into
the darkness. The head of the Phung mused upon the play of the flames.
For a period the men squatted by the edge of the precipice, looking across
the steppe. Traz and Anacho fell into an argument regarding the nature of the
Phung, Traz declaring them to be products of unnatural union between Pnumekin
and the corpses of Pnume. "The seed waxes in the decay like a barkworm, and
finally breaks out through the skin as a young Phung, not greatly different from
a bald night-hound."
"Sheer idiocy, lad!" said Anacho with easy condescension. "They surely breed