"Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Mitchell)

 He spoke to them in turn, and most — those in least agony — could listen, even make reassuring
faces to comfort him. Two of them tried to make jokes.
"... Sir, didn't think it was possible for a trooper to outrun her horse. But by Mountain Jesus, I was
scared enough and did it."
"Mavis, you were just charging to the rear." That oldest of cavalry witticisms.
Trooper Mavis Drew had been cut across the belly. The wound was bandaged tight to keep things
in.
Sam kissed her on the forehead, and went on down the line. Those who could see, seemed glad to
see him.
"Where's Colonel Flores?"
The mercy-medic, a bearded older man, and tired, pointed to the tent entrance. "Inside, down to the
left."
"He'll live?"
"Live one-handed," the medic said.
The tent was filled with sunshine glow through canvas woven of the Empire's southern cotton, filled
with that light and a soft, multiple hum of agony, the army's silence-in-suffering fallen away. Portia-doctor
was with someone, bent over, doing something that made the person's breath catch and catch again.
Sam went down the narrow aisle to the left, and saw, at the end of a row, Ned Flores lying slight on
a folding cot. His left arm was out on the blanket, the wrist a fat wad of white bandage spotted with red.
The man in the cot beside his was snoring softly, unconscious.
"Sorry, Sam. Not quite as planned." Barely Ned's voice, rusty as an old man's, and from what
seemed an aged face — no longer a young hawk's, handsome, high-beaked, and cruel. His youth had
gone with his wound, and losing.
Monroe knelt beside the cot. "No, not quite as planned, Ned.
At least three hundred more dead and wounded than planned." He kept his voice low, "I sent you
down here to lose a battle — to lose maybe forty or fifty of our people, then break off and run."
"Right... right."
"That was only between us, Ned. I thought you understood why it was necessary to lose at least a
skirmish."
"I know. Necessary…"
"Our army's always won — never lost — and that's become dangerous. Even more so, now, with
the Khan moving on Middle Kingdom. I didn't want him to think us a serious threat, and I didn't want the
shock of our first lost battle, my first lost battle, to occur when we couldn't afford it. I thought you
understood that."
"Yes." A long pause, eyes closed. "Like cow-sore vaccination against the pops."
"Then" — careful to speak softly — "then why the fuck didn't you order the regiment disengaged
after the first melee? Behind you was all the room in the world to run!"
"Well... tell you, Sam. Seemed to me... we had a chance to beat the bastards." Apparently great
effort required to get that said.
"Ned, you did not have a chance to beat them — almost seven hundred imperial cataphracts met in
a pass at such close quarters? And you weren't sent down here to beat them!"
"My fault." Flores seemed to doze, then woke with a start.
Sam stood. "Yes. And my fault for trusting you to obey orders."
"I know... I lost all those people."
"Yes, and deserved to lose more than a hand, Ned. You deserved to lose your head."
"You... can have it."
Sam bent over him. "Ned, we've been friends since we were boys on the mountain. But if that order
to lose, lose and run, hadn't been only between us — and have to remain only between us — I would
have you tried and hanged for disobedience."
"Don't doubt it, Sam," Ned Flores said. "And what a relief... that would be."