"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 18 - Warlords of Gaikon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

he managed to land rolling, on his shoulders and back. He kept rolling, doing another complete
somersault and leaping to his feet at the end. Five careful deep breaths, and he was off down the hill,
ignoring all the bruises and scrapes and twinges in his protesting muscles. He did not run blindly, like a
panic-stricken animal. He ran like a distance runner, pacing himself for the best combination of speed and
endurance.
He hoped his guess was right about those temple guards not being built or trained for running.


Chapter 4
«^»
Blade never found out whether the guards came after him or not. They would have had a job catching up
with him if they had. He kept on at a steady lope for nearly half an hour, heading downhill as much as
possible. When his breath began to come short, he slowed down to an equally steady jog. He kept that
up for another full hour. By that time he estimated he was at least six miles from the temple and decided it
was safe enough to stop and rest. He badly needed to catch his breath and reorient himself. He didn't
want to wind up marching steadily away from civilization, on top of everything else that had gone wrong
since he had arrived in this dimension. So far about the only things he had done right were not getting
himself killed and not killing anybody else. For all he knew, the affair at the temple might even now have
the guards scattering all over the countryside, with a description of him and a "kill this man on sight"
order.
 So he rested just long enough to catch his breath and get some of the aches out of his legs. Then he
was on his feet again and on his way downhill. Sooner or later going downhill should bring him to
civilization. He had never heard of a people who built all their homes on the tops of the hills and none in
the valleys.
He had been walking for about another hour when it started to rain, a miserable, chill drizzle that
soon strengthened into an even more miserable and chillier downpour. The rain made some of the caked
and smeared brown paint run, so that before long he looked like the victim of some particularly repulsive
skin disease. Blade was too disgusted and almost too tired to even swear at this.
It was beginning to get dark when Blade finally came out on the bank of a small swift stream tumbling
downhill through a series of pools and rapids. Unmistakable paths ran along both banks of the stream.
Blade nearly let out a cheer, and then swallowed it as the sound of human voices reached him over the
patter of the rain and the gurgle of water boiling over the stones.
It was women singing—or rather, chanting rhythmically. Their voices were punctuated by wet,
slapping noises. Blade slipped silently through fifty feet of trees and dripping bushes, then crouched and
watched even more silently.
Two half-nude young women—hardly more than girls, judging from their slight figures—squatted on
the edge of the stream, washing clothes and singing to themselves as they worked. They pounded each
garment on a convenient rock to get the dirt out and then spread it out on one of the bushes behind them.
Blade saw loincloths, long socks, sashes and scarves, and more of the kimono-like robes in half a dozen
different styles and colors. If he could just sneak in and make a quick grab, his clothing problem at least
would be solved.
Blade had once made it safely through a Communist minefield with a sixty-pound pack on his back,
so there wasn't much he had to learn about moving silently and carefully. Inch by inch he crept closer,
belly flat to the mound most of the time, raising his head to take an occasional bearing. It took him five
minutes to cover five yards. By the time he did, all his bruises and strained muscles were protesting
angrily. His spine felt as though it were going to snap with a crack loud enough to alert the women.
Two yards more. Then he had to freeze for what seemed like an hour, as one of the women sat
down to rest with her eyes on the spread-out clothes. Blade lay motionless, gritting his teeth to stifle a
grunt of impatience, wondering if the woman would ever get up off her arse!
It seemed like an hour, but it couldn't have been more than five minutes before the woman stood up