"Martha Wells - Wheel of the Infinite" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

stomach and pushing her away. She staggered back but didn’t fall; she must have some sort of leather or
lacquered wood chest armor under her silk vest. Maskelle couldn’t see much in the half-light, but she
assumed the razor-edge of the heavy wooden club was aimed toward her. She kept the staff pointed at
the leader, braced to move. The other woman shuffled to the side, trying to get past Maskelle’s guard.
Then Maskelle saw that the ropes still attached to the broken crane arm and hanging over the gallery
were jerking and twitching; it had to be the rivermen who had gone over the rail with the crane, still
trapped in them. Then a head popped up over the edge.
She knew who it was. The trapped traveller had had hair cropped at his shoulders while the river
raiders either shaved their heads to avoid lice or grew wild waist-length manes. Grinning, Maskelle
angled sideways, making poking motions with the staff, as if she meant to try to break for the door across
the gallery. Her opponent, thinking to catch her between herself and the packed door, obligingly stepped
backward, closer to the edge.
The traveller hauled himself further up, and when the raider stepped back into reach, he swung his
sheathed sword around and struck the back of her knees. The woman toppled backwards with a
choked-off cry.
Maskelle turned immediately for the cargo doors, using her staff to trip a flailing, foul-smelling shadow
that tried to stop her. Rain and wind poured in, drenching the boards under her feet. She found the ropes
for the winch, but they didn’t move when she tugged on them. The other counterweight must be
broken, damn it, she thought, and tossed her staff out, hoping it struck the dock, not the river. She
grabbed the heavy rope and swung out after it, getting a confused view of the river below with what little
light there was from the cloud-covered moon reflecting off the angry surface. She hoped the traveller had
the sense to follow her.
She scrambled down the rope, not quite as agile as a monkey, wishing she was ten years younger.
The raiders must have had the outpost longer than she had initially thought, or it had been abandoned
before they had ever found it; the rope was beginning to rot, so soft in most places her grasping fingers
went right through the strands. But her feet thumped down on the dock before she knew it.
Cursing, she felt around on the scarred wood, feeling holes and splinters, but not her staff. There were
shouts from above and the lamps were flaring back to life inside the outpost. She stood, the wet wind
tearing at her hair, took two steps toward the bank, and fell flat on her face. She had tripped over her
staff.
“Thank you for nothing, Ancient Lineage,” she muttered, her own abbreviated version of the proper
Thanksgiving. She grabbed up the staff, staggered back to her feet, and ran for the bank.
Once in the bush she slowed, knowing a fall would only make more noise, though the rain covered
most of the sound of her passing. When she had gone some distance, she stopped and crouched in the
dark shelter of a dripping tana bush. She heard the thrashing of several people fighting their way through
the foliage near her. The raiders wouldn’t stay long in the jungle; it was a different realm than the river and
they would fear it. Superstitious idiots, she thought, squatting in the mud. It was the river that would
harbor the evil spirits tonight.
The raiders following her thrashed away and she started to stand. Someone touched her shoulder
lightly, a caution not to move; she froze where she was and an instant later heard one more passage
through the bush. There was nothing but the rain after that and the tingle of shock through Maskelle’s skin
and the hackles rising on the back of her neck. Someone crouched in the mud next to her; the air was
alive with the warmth and breath of a living body. How she could have missed it before, she couldn’t
think. No thanks for the warning, she thought sourly to the Ancestors. In the thirty years of her
apprenticeship and mastery as Their Servant, They had seldom been around when she wanted them. She
wished she could say that was the reason she had turned on them in the end, but that was a lie she
wouldn’t tell herself. Experimentally, she whispered, “Are they gone?”
There was the briefest pause, then he said, “They are now.”
Maskelle didn’t move and for a moment neither did he. Then a great glop of water from the tana bush
struck the back of her neck and she twitched. He flinched, stood suddenly and was gone, though this