"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 05 - The Spirit of Dorsai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

long-ago swoop on her slammer, handgun in fist, down into the first of the outlaw camps. It had been
when Dorsai was new, and the camps, back in the mountains, had been bases for the out-of-work
mercenaries. She had finally led the women of Foralie district against these men who had raided their
homes for so long, in the intervals when the professional soldiers of their own households were away
fighting on other worlds.

The last thing the outlaws had expected from a bunch of women had been a frontal assault in full daylight.
Therefore, it had been that she had given them. In her dream she had been recalling the fierce bolts from
the handgun slicing through makeshift walls and the bodies beyond, setting fire to dried wood and oily
rags.

By the time she had been in among the huts, some of the outlaws were already armed and out of their
structures; and the rest of the fight had disintegrated into a mixed blur of bodies and weapons. The
outlaws were all veteransтАФ but so, in their own way, were the women from the households. There were
good shots on both sides; and in her younger strength, then, she was a match for any out-of-condition
mercenary. Also, she was carried along in a rage they could not matchтАж

She blinked, pushing the images of the dream from her. The outlaws were gone nowтАФas were the
Eversills who had tried to steal her land, and other enemies. They were all gone, now, making way for
new foes. She listened a moment longer, but about her the house of Fal Morgan was still.

After a moment she got up anyway, stepping for a second into the chill bath of night air as she reached
for a robe from the chair by her bed. Strong moonlight, filtering through sheer curtains, gave back her
ghost in dim image from the tall armoire mirror. A ghost from sixty years past. For a second before the
robe settled about her, the lean and still-erect shape in the mirror invented the illusion of a young,
full-fleshed body. She went out.

Twenty steps down the long panelled corridor, with the familiar silent cone rifles and other combat arms
standing like sentries in their racks on either wall, she became conscious of the fact that habit still had the
energy handgun in her grasp. She shelved it in the rack and went on to her great-granddaughter's door.
She opened it and stepped in.

The moonlight shone through the curtains even more brightly on this side of the house. Betta still slept,
breathing heavily, her swollen middle rising like a promise under the covering blankets. The concern
about this child-to-be, which had occupied Amanda all these past months, came back on her with fresh
urgency. She touched the rough, heavy cloth over the unborn life briefly and lightly with her fingertips.
Then she turned and went back out. Down the corridor and around the corner, the Earth-built clock in
the living room chimed the first quarter of an hour past four a.m..

She was fully awake now, and her mind moved purposefully. The birth was due at any time now, and
Betta was insistent about wanting to use the name Amanda if it was a girl. Was she wrong in withholding
it, again? Her decision could not be put off much longer. In the kitchen she made herself tea. Sitting at the
table by the window, she drank it, gazing down over the green tops of the conifers, the pines and spruce
on the slope that fell away from the side of the house, then rose again to the close horizon of the ridge in
that direction, and the mountain peaks beyond, overlooking Foralie Town and Fal Morgan alike, together
with a dozen similar homesteads.

She could not put off any longer the making up of her mind. As soon as the baby was born, Betta would
want to name her. On the surface, it did not seem such an important matter. Why should one name be
particularly sacred? Except that Betta did not realize, none of them in the family seemed to realize, how