"Vance, Jack - Planet of Adventure 01 - City of the Chasch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

"That would be in the country of the Blue Chasch. We knew that already."

Reith looked off to the northwest, ruminating. "We don't want to go south into the marshes, or back into the forest. What lies to the east, beyond the steppes?"

"I don't know. I think the Draschade Ocean. It is far away."

"Is that where the caravans come from?"

"Coad is on a gulf which connects to the Draschade. Between is all of Aman Steppe, the Emblem Men and other tribes as well: the Kite-fighters, the Mad Axes, the Berl Totems, the Yellow Blacks and others beyond my knowledge."

Reith considered. His space-boat had been taken by the Blue Chasch into the northwest. Northwest therefore seemed the most reasonable direction in which to fare.

Traz sat dozing, chin on his chest. Wearing Onmale he had demonstrated a bleak unrelenting nature; now, with the soul of the emblem lifted from his own, he had become forlorn and wistful, though still far more reserved than Reith thought natural.

Reith's own eyelids were drooping with fatigue: the sunlight was warm; the spot seemed secure ... What if the berl should return? Reith forced himself to wakefulness. While Traz slept he repacked his gear.


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CHAPTER THREE

TRAZ AWOKE. HE turned Reith a sheepish look and rose quickly to his feet.

Reith arose; they set forth: by some unspoken understanding into the northwest. The time was middle morning, the sun a tarnished brass disc in the slate sky. The air was pleasantly cool, and for the first time since his arrival on Tschai Reith felt a lifting of the spirits. His body was mended, he had recovered his equipment, he knew the general location of the scout-boat: immeasurable improvement over his previous situation.

They trudged steadily across the steppe. The forest became a dark blur behind them: elsewhere the horizons were empty. After their midday meal they slept for a period; then, awakening in the late afternoon, they went on into the northwest.

The sun dropped into a bank of low clouds, casting an embroidery of dull copper over the top. There was no shelter on the open steppe; with nothing better to do they walked on.

The right was quiet and still; far to the east they heard the wailing of night-hounds but were not molested.

The following day they finished the food and water from the packs which Traz had supplied and began to subsist on the pods of pilgrim plant and sap from watak roots: the first bland, the second acrid.

On the morning of the third day they saw a fleck of white drifting across the western sky. Traz flung himself flat behind a low shrub and motioned Reith to do likewise. "Dirdir! They hunt!"

Reith brought forth his scanscope, sighted on the object. With elbows on the ground he zoomed the magnification to fifty diameters, when air vibration began to confuse the image. He saw a long flat boat-like hull, riding the air on rakish cusps and odd half-crescents: an aesthetic style, apparently, rather than utilitarian design. Crouched on the hull were four pale shapes, unidentifiable as Dirdir or Dirdirmen. The flyer traveled a course roughly parallel to their own, passing several miles to the west. Reith wondered at Traz's tension. He asked, "What do they hunt?"

"Men."

"For sport?"

"For sport. For food, as well. They eat man-meat."

"I'd like to have that flyer," mused Reith. He rose to his feet, ignoring Traz's frantic protests. But the Dirdir flyer disappeared into the north. Traz relaxed, but searched the sky. "Sometimes they fly high and look down until they spot a lone warrior. Then they drop like perriaults, to noose the man, or engage him with electric swords."

They walked on, always north and west. Toward sunset Traz once again became uneasy, for reasons Reith could not discern, though there was a particularly eerie quality to the landscape. The sun, obscured by a mist, was small and dim and cast a light as wan as lymph over the vastness of the steppe. There was nothing to be seen save their own long shadows behind them, but as Traz walked he looked this way and that, pausing at times to search the way they had come. Reith finally asked, "What are you looking for?"

"Something is following us."

"Oh?" Reith turned to look back across the steppe. "How do you know?"