Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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well. "Khud-hird, is he all right? Ve ve got to get him to a Haian!"
Shkai'ra looked down at the Yeoli, still lying across her saddle. Bleeding from the nose, big graze across
the side of his face, but probably no broken bones from the way his body moved. She peeled back an
eyelid, then the other. The pupils reacted, but one was a little bigger than the other.
"Concussion," she said. "Not too bad." Her voice dropped, steady and just loud enough to carry a few
feet over the enormous noise of combat from the road. She fixed the girl's eyes with hers. "What did I tell
you when you arrived, about discipline?"
Sova's lips thinned. "I know. I'm under army law."
"Correct, military apprentice. And the punishment for disobeying a clear order in the face of the enemy is
flogging. In this army, flogging up to falling at the discretion of the commander." Sova blinked; no doubt
she'd heard tales of what that felt like, from Yeolis. Shkai'ra waited,expression bleak. "Given your youth,
the circumstances and whatever, I'll commute it to fifteen strokes. Consider yourself on report, trooper.
Now take that one—" she jerked a thumb at the casualty across Sova's saddlebow, the cause of the
trouble, "—and Sneeze-name doesn't-take-orders number two here back to the Haians. When he wakes
up, you can decide whether you'd rather have your strokes right away or beside him when he's fit,
because he's getting the same. Dismissed!"
Sova found her hands shaking, as she helped lift Echera-e, who was still limp, onto a litter.He's so pale .
Suddenly she wanted to throw up.Wake up, wake up, love … The cool sense in her wondered why the
fear.He might die. I'm going to get flogged. He's going to get flogged if he doesn't die. I just fought
—the feeling was utterly divorced from thoughts or the truth of the present, that it was over and she was
safe—all of the above. Wake up , livling.If he dies I want to say I carried him , she thought, and tried
to keep her arms steady on the litter-grips.No . Khyd-hirdsaid it wasn't too bad .
There was always a rolling infirmary near the head of the great column now, since the harassment had
increased. She scanned for the cart with the double white-striped flag. A moan came from the litter. "
Mamaiyana, Tyizil…" The name of his horse. "Sovee." The litter moved as his weight shifted; she
looked over her shoulder to see him lean over its edge, and throw up onto the ground. "Kyuzai, escuse
me, ohhhhhhhh…" He fell back.
"Keep still, Echerry," she said. "I'm here. You'll be all right and so will Ansena and we won and we're
almost at the infirmary." She wondered how much he understood.
The Alliance army had a good hundred Haians, unheard of for a military force.Because the Arkans
broke the Compact and invaded them. This is their way of fighting for their freedom; if we take
the Empire, Chenga will give Haiu Menshir back its independence . Gentle Haian hands lifted the
two litters, quickly examined, touching necks, pressing wrists.
Ansena would need surgery; they took him straight into the cart. Echera-e they checked as Shkai'ra had,
But more tenderly. "Concussion," the healer, a woman said. "Must stay lying; we put heem in cart and
look efter heem today. He ken stay een hees own bed tonight, probebly, but should have someone weeth
heem to keep heem still, end quiet. Come beck when we set camp."
"Their names and unit?" the Yeoli clerk with the wax-board said briskly, as the healer moved on, busy.
Sova told him, and then opened her mouth, but he cut her off with a chop of his pen. "Healers and