Nation - Пратчетт Терри Дэвид Джон (читать книги бесплатно полностью TXT) 📗

“Yes, but his gun will run out of bang before my knife runs out of sharp,” said Mau.

“Mau, I don’t want you to die!” Daphne shouted. The words echoed back off the cliffs, and she blushed crimson.

“Then who should die? Milo? Pilu? Who? No. If anyone is going to die, it should be me. I’ve died before. I know how it’s done. No more discussion!”

CHAPTER 14

Duel

BEHIND THEM THE HUBBUB of the meeting had stopped.

Silence fell over the war canoes lined with faces; the cluster of Raider chiefs on the shoreline; the people who had crept out to watch from the cliff. The sun was too bright to look at and was already boiling all the color out of the landscape. The world was holding its breath.

There would be no count, no signal. There were no rules, either. But there was tradition. The fight would start when the first man picked up his weapon. Mau’s spear and knife were on the sand in front of him. Ten feet away, Cox had laid down his guns only after a lot of argument.

Now it was just a case of watching the other man’s eyes.

Cox grinned at him.

Hadn’t every boy dreamed of this? To stand in front of the enemy? And they were all here together, under the white-hot sun, all the lies, all the fears, all the terrors, all the horrors that the wave had brought, all here and in mortal form. Here he could beat them.

And all that mattered was this: If you don’t dare to think you might, you won’t.

Mau’s eyes creaked with staring. He was nearly blinded by the fierce sunlight, but at least there were no more voices in his head —

Except…

It is a good day to die, said the voice of Locaha.

Mau’s arm shot out, hurling the handful of sand into Cox’s eyes. He didn’t wait — he just grabbed his knife and ran, listening to the cursing behind him. But you can’t cheat when there are no rules. He’d picked up his weapon when he’d put his spear down. He didn’t have to say he’d chosen the sand itself. It was a good weapon, too.

Don’t stop. Don’t look back, just keep running.

There wasn’t a plan. There had never been a plan. All there was was hope, but there was little enough of that, and there was something the ghost girl had taught him on the very first day they met: Guns did not like water.

The lagoon was where he belonged right now, and he fled for it, dodging and weaving as much as he dared. The water was his world. Cox was a big, heavy man, and water would drag at his clothes. Yes!

He heard a shot fired, and a bullet sang past his head. But here was the lagoon and he dived in when the water was hardly above his knees. He would have to come up for air, but surely the man would not dare to come in after him?

Out toward the middle of the lagoon, where the damaged canoes were drifting, he stopped and made use of their cover to grab some more air. Then he peered around the canoe to find Cox — and he was right there on the shoreline, already sighting on him.

Mau dived, but Cox had expected that. Perhaps it was true. The man could see into people’s heads.

Mau turned to look back. He couldn’t help it. Men face their enemy, just once….

And what Mau saw was the bullet coming. It hit the water a few feet in front of him, trailing bubbles — and stopped inches from his face. He gently picked it out of the water as it started to fall, and then let it go and watched in wonder as it dropped to the sand.

How had that happened? Bullets really didn’t like water….

He climbed up to the surface for a mouthful of air and heard another bang as he dived again. He turned to watch the trail of bubbles head toward him, and the bullet bounced off his arm. Bounced! He hardly felt it!

He struck out for the gap into the deep water, which was half blocked with floating weeds today. At least it gave him some cover. But what had happened to the bullets? A bullet certainly hadn’t bounced off Ataba. It had made a big hole, and there had been a lot of blood.

He would have to surface again, because Cox was probably even more dangerous when you couldn’t see where he was.

He grabbed the edge of the coral, steadied himself on a root of an old tree that had wedged in the gap. Very cautiously, he pulled himself up.

And there was Cox, running, running along the spit of old coral that led from the shore around to Little Nation and the new gap. Mau heard his boots crunch on the coral as he ran, speeding up while the watching Raiders scuttled out of the way.

The man glanced up, raised his gun, and, still pounding over the coral, fired twice.

A bullet went through Mau’s ear. The first thought as he dropped back through the water was about the pain. The second thought was about the pain, too, because there was so much of it. The water was turning pink. He reached up to his ear and most of it was not there. His third thought was: Sharks. And the next thought, happening in some little world of its own, said: He has fired five shots. When he has fired all the bullets he has, he will have to load the guns again. But if I was him, I would wait until I’d had one last shot with the big pistol and then reload it, keeping the little pistol ready to hand in case the darkie suddenly came out of the water.

It was a strange, chilling thought, dancing across his mind like a white thread against the terrible red background. It went on: He can think like you. You must think like him.

But if I think like him, he wins, he thought back.

And his new thought replied: Why? To think like him is not to be him! The hunter learns the ways of the hog, but he is not bacon. He learns the way of the weather, but he is not a cloud. And when the venomous beast charges at him, he remembers who is the hunter, and who the hunted! Dive now! Dive right now!

He dived. The tree half wedged in the gap was tangled up in a mass of seaweed and palm fronds, twisting everything together as the tides rolled it. He ducked into its shadow.

Already the tree had become a world of its own. Many of its branches had been ripped off, but the trailing weeds had colonized it, and little fish darted in and out of the forests of green. But better than that, if he tucked himself up between the tree and the edge of the gap, he could just get his face out of the water and be lost in the mass of vegetation.

He dropped back under the surface; the water around him was going pink. How much blood could one ear contain? Enough to attract sharks, that’s how much.

There was a thump, and the whole of the tree shook.

“I’ve got you now, my little chappie,” said the voice of Cox. He sounded as though he was right above Mau. “Nowhere to go now, eh?” The tree rocked again as the man walked up and down in his heavy boots. “And I won’t fall off, don’t you worry about that. This piece of wood is as wide as bloody Bond Street to a sailor!”

There was another thump. Cox was jumping up and down, making the tree rock. It rolled slightly, and a bullet went past Mau’s face before he pulled himself back into the shadows.

“Uh-oh. We’re bloody bleeding,” said Cox. “Well done. All I’m going to have to do is wait for the sharks to turn up. I always like to see a shark having his dinner.”

Mau worked his way along the bottom of the log, hand over hand. The trail of pinkness followed him.

There had been six shots. He raised his head in the shelter of a clump of weeds and heard a click.

“Y’ know, I’m really disappointed in those cannibal johnnies,” said Cox, right overhead. “Too much talk, too many rules, far too much mumbo jumbo. Jumbo mumbo jumbo, ha, ha. Milk-and-watery bunch, the lot of ’em. Been eating too many missionaries, if you ask me.” There was another click. Cox was reloading. He had to use two hands for that, didn’t he?

Click…

Mau reached down for his knife and his belt was empty…. Click.