"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 28 - Wizard of Rentoro" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

expert fighting men. In the face of the villagers' lack of resistance, they could have made a shambles of
the place, looting, burning, slaughtering people right and left.
Yet what had they actually done? They'd kidnapped three men and two girls. They'd raped a few
women, and frightened a good many children out of their wits. They'd done a lot of vandalism, but
nothing that even these peasants couldn't make good in a few months. They'd only killed one man,
although they'd obviously had the skill and weapons to kill fifty.
They must have had orders, Blade realized. Orders to take able-bodied prisoners, terrorize women
and children, smash enough property to annoy everybody, but kill only when absolutely necessary. If that
man hadn't come dashing out with the ax, he would probably be alive and drinking his beer tonight.
The riders had their orders. From whom? That was an entirely different question, and one not so
easily answered. Blade remembered the leader sitting on his mount, eyes fixed on the sky, apparently lost
in a trance. Had the man been waiting for orders? If so, how had he expected to receive them, doing
nothing but sitting on his mount and staring up at the gray sky?
That helmet of his was roomy enough to hold a radio, but radio made no sense in a Dimension of
peasant villages and riders in plate armor. Maybe he'd been seeing some signal from outside Blade's field
of vision. Maybe—
Maybe it was time to stop guessing! This Dimension contained extremely well-trained fighting men,
who seemed to follow the orders of some distant master. Both the men and their master could be
dangerous enemies or powerful friends.
That was all Blade could know for the moment. He would just have to do what he'd done in a dozen
other places, both in Home Dimension and in Dimension X. Watch his step and his tongue, guard his
back, and keep his eyes and ears open. It was an effective prescription for survival. If it hadn't been,
Richard Blade would have been dead many times over.
Blade finished the first loaf and ate half of a second. The bread was lumpy, coarse gray stuff, sour,
damp, and heavy. It lay like a brick on his stomach, but almost any sort of food gave some energy.
There'd be no shortage of water, either, not with this rain.
Blade pulled the blanket tightly around himself and lay down to get some sleep.
 The rain must have stopped well before dawn. Blade awoke in full daylight, with sun flooding the
forest and the only sound the drip of water from the leaves and needles. He found a spring only a few
yards away, drank, shouldered his ax, and moved on.
In daylight he could get a better look at the clothes he'd snatched up from the village and roughly
pulled on. No two garments were the same size, the same color, the same material or texture. He looked
like a scarecrow run away from its field, a tramp dressed in stolen castoffs—or perhaps a footloose
woodcutter, with no home but the forest and no roof but the sky. A footloose woodcutter, exactly the
sort of man who might be found in this forest. Certainly no one would suspect a man looking like Blade,
tramping along with an ax over his shoulder, of being from a world far beyond the imagination of anyone
in this Dimension.
He couldn't have found himself a better disguise if he'd thought the matter over for a solid week. The
computer had done its usual job of altering his brain so that he both spoke and understood the local
language, so he'd have no problems there. He could move on at his own pace, going where he wanted,
listening and learning without attracting any notice.
That would be more than useful. It could save his life. Blade suspected that sooner or later rumors of
wandering strangers in this Dimension reached the wolf's-head riders or their master. He didn't want them
coming after him before he knew more about them.
Blade still did not have quite enough faith in his disguise to head openly down the road. He kept
under cover of the trees, just within sight of the road, as long as the forest lasted. Once he saw a civilian
rider pass, spurring his shaggy mount to a ponderous gallop. Another time he saw a cart loaded with
clattering barrels rumble past behind four yoked oxen.
After three hours Blade was out of the forest and into cultivated land again. Here there were
orchards instead of vineyards, row after row of squat close-grown trees with blackish green leaves and