"David Weber & Linda Evans - Hells Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

rose, flailing for balance as he teetered in the middle of the broad, shallow stream. The heavy infantry
arbalest in his right hand threatened to pull him the rest of the way off center and down, and the prospect
of tumbling into the crystal clear, icy water rushing over its stony bed wrung another, more heartfelt
obscenity out of him.
He managed, somehow, not to fall. Which was a damned good thing. Sword Harnak would have
had his guts for garters (assuming that Gaythar Harklan, Osmuna's squad shield didn't rip them out first) if
he'd fucked up and given Fifty Garlath an excuse to pitch another damned tantrum. Garlath was a
piss-poor substitute for Fifty Thaylar, and he was already in a crappy enough mood. Fifty Thaylar would
only have laughed it off if his point man fell into a river; Garlath would probably rip everyone involved a
new anal orifice just to relieve his own emotional constipation.
Personally, Osmuna reflected, as he continued on across the stream, stepping more cautiously from
stone to stone, he thought the bee the Old Man had obviously gotten into his bonnet was probably a bit
on the irrational side. Oh, sure, The Book insisted that point elements and flanking scouts be thrown out
and that they maintain visual contact with one another at all times. But despite all of that, it wasn't like
they were going to run into hordes of howling savages, and everyone knew it. No one ever had, in two
centuries of steady exploration and expansion. Still, between the Old Man and Garlath, Osmuna knew
which he preferred. Officers who let themselves get sloppy about one thing tended to get sloppy about
other things . . . and officers who got sloppy, tended to get their troopers killed.
His thoughts had carried him to the far bank, and he started up a shallow slope. The line of the
stream had opened a hole in the forest canopy, which permitted the growth of the sort of dense, tangled
brush and undergrowth which had been choked out elsewhere in the virgin mature forest. As he began to
force his way through it, a flicker of movement higher up the slope, on the edge of the trees, caught his
attention. He looked at it, and froze.
Faslan chan Salgmun froze in disbelief, staring down at the river.
The man—and it was, indisputably, a man, however he'd gotten here—looked completely out of
place. And not simply because this was a virgin world, which meant, by definition, that no one lived there.
It wasn't just his uniform, although that pattern of dense green, black, and white would have been far
better suited to a tropical rain forest somewhere than to the mixed conifers and deciduous trees towering
above him. Nor was it his coloring, which, after all, was nothing extraordinary. It was the totality of his
appearance—the peculiar spiked helmet, covered in the same inappropriate camouflage fabric of which
his uniform was made; the clubbed braid of bright, golden hair spilling over the back of his collar; the
knee-high, tightly laced boots; the short sword at his left hip . . . and the peculiar looking crossbow
carried in his right hand.
It was like some weird composite image, some insane juxtapositioning of modern textiles and
manufactured goods with medieval weaponry, and it couldn't be here. Couldn't exist. In eighty years of
exploration under the Portal Authority's auspices, no trace of any other human civilization had ever been
discovered.
Until, chan Salgmun realized, today.
And what the fuck do I do now?
***
Trooper Osmuna stared at the impossible apparition. It wore brown trousers, short boots, and a
green jacket, and its slouch hat looked like something a Tukorian cattle herder might have worn. It had a
puny looking sheath knife at one hip, certainly not anything anyone might have called a proper sword,
and something else—something with a handgrip, almost like one of the hand crossbows some hunters
used for small game—in an abbreviated scabbard on the other hip. It was also holding something in both
hands. Something like an arbalest, but with no bow stave.
It couldn't be here, he thought. Not after two hundred years! Despite all of his training, all of his
experience, Osmuna discovered that he'd been totally unprepared for what had been laughingly dismissed
as "the other guy contingency" literally for generations.
His heart seemed to have stopped out of sheer shock, but then he felt his pulse begin to race and