"Andre Norton - Time Traders 5 - Firehand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

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Firehand by Andre
Norton and P.M. Griffin
1
ROSS MURDOCK'S EYES flickered to the dancing flames of the small
fire he had made. Fire. The ancient symbol of home and hearth. The
source of warmth and light. Humanity's ally against the dark and the
things, real and imagined, that haunted it. Man's friend. Man's enemy.
Fire could hurt, too, as evidenced by his scorched face and hands.

Even in that, it was his aide. Pain, clean physical agony, cut through
the chain of mental compulsion with which the starmen were attempting
to bind and draw him to their will.

Anger flickered inside him, leaping up like the tongues of his fire. The
aliens had hunted him for days now, followed him inexorably as he had
struggled downriver in his desperate effort to reach this rendezvous point.
They had sought him, and they had turned the awesome powers of their
minds against him in an attempt to break him, to force him to return to
them. Every step he had taken had been a battle against his own body, and
when he had been forced to yield to the need for sleep, he had been
compelled to bind himself to a tree or root so as not to turn back in his
unconscious state and deliver himself up to them.

His head raised. Injured, hungry, exhausted, he had still made it. He
had come too late, but he was here. He was free, and he had beaten their
first attack.

He would stay free. Whether he managed by some miracle to return to
his own time or was fated to remain in the Bronze Age, whether he lived
for long years more or died relatively soon from want or violence, he would
perish through an agency born of his own Earth. The Baldies would not
have him and would not rule him.

Murdock glanced at the weapon he grasped in his right hand. It did not
look like much to set against the crippling force of the aliens, only a
burning brand pulled from his driftwood fire, but it would do the job—if
he had the courage to use it.

They attacked again, determined to crush his inexplicable resistance,
but Ross had braced himself against the agony exploding in his head. His
mind remained his own. He could think, and he could control the muscles
he must use.