Gordon R. Dickson by Lost Dorsai

Author:Lost Dorsai [Dorsai, Lost]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-22T05:00:00+00:00

“That’s a general observation, only,” I told him. “I don’t mean to accuse—”

“It’s not what you accuse me of, it’s what I accuse me of,” he said, in a low voice looking out at the oncoming regiments. “I knew what it meant when my bandsmen took off. But I also understand how they could decide to do it.”

There was nothing more I could say. We both knew that without his forty men we could not even make a pretence of holding the first terrace past the moment when the first line of Naharese would reach the base of the ramparts. There were just too few of us and too many of them to stop them from coming over the top.

“They’re probably hiding just out beyond the walls,” he said. He was still talking about his former bandsmen. “If we do manage to hold out for a day or two, there’s a slight chance they might trickle back—”

He broke off, staring past me. I turned and saw Amanda.

How she had managed to do it by herself, I do not know. But, clearly, she had gotten herself out of her hospital bed and strapped the portable drainage unit on to her. It was not heavy or much bigger than a thick book; and it was designed for wearing by an ambulatory patient, but it must have been hell for her to rig it by herself with that tube rubbing inside her at every deep breath.

Now she was here, looking as if she might collapse at any time, but on her feet with the unit slung from her right shoulder and strapped to her right side. She had a sidearm clipped to her left thigh, over the cloth of the hospital gown; and the gown itself had been ripped up the center so that she could walk in it.

“What the hell are you doing up here?” I snarled at her. “Get back to bed!”

“Corunna—” she gave me the most level and unyielding stare I have ever encountered from anyone in my life, “don’t give me orders. I rank you.”

I blinked at her. It was true I had been asked to be her driver for the trip here, and in a sense that put me under her orders. But for her to presume to tell a Captain of a full flight of fighting ships, with an edge of half a dozen years in seniority and experience that in a combat situation like this she ranked him—it was raving nonsense. I opened my mouth to explode—and found myself bursting out in laughter, instead. The situation was too ridiculous. Here we were, five people even counting Michael, facing three thousand; and I was about to let myself get trapped into an argument over who ranked who. Aside from the fact that only the accident of her present assignment gave her any claim to superiority over me, relative rank between Dorsai had always been a matter of local conditions and situations, tempered with a large pinch of common sense.

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