Cordelia's Honor Read Online Free PDF

Vorkosigan that he should so automatically accept her bare word as binding; he evidently thought along the same lines himself.
    The east began to grow grey at last, then peach, green, and gold in a pastel repeat of last night's spectacular sunset. Vorkosigan stirred and sat up, and helped her take Dubauer down to the stream to wash. They had another breakfast of oatmeal and blue cheese dressing. Vorkosigan tried mixing his together this time, for variety. Cordelia tried alternating bites, to see if that would help. Neither commented aloud on the menu.
    * * *
    Vorkosigan led northwest across the sandy, brick-colored plain. In the dry season it would have been near-desert. Now it was brightly decorated with fresh green and yellow growth, and dozens of varieties of low-growing wildflowers. Dubauer did not seem to notice them, Cordelia saw sadly.
    After about three hours at a brisk pace they came to their first check of the day, a steep rocky valley with a coffee-and-cream-colored river rushing through it. They walked along the edge of the escarpment looking for a ford.
    "That rock down there moved," Cordelia observed suddenly.
    Vorkosigan pulled his field scope from his belt and took a closer look. "You're right."
    Half a dozen coffee-and-cream-colored lumps that looked like rocks on a sandbar proved to be low-slung, thick-limbed hexapeds, basking in the morning sun.
    "They seem to be some sort of amphibian. I wonder if they're carnivores?" said Vorkosigan.
    "I wish you hadn't interrupted my survey so soon," Cordelia complained. "Then I could have answered all those questions. There go some more of those soap-bubble things—goodness, I wouldn't have thought they could grow so big and still fly."
    A flock of a dozen or so large radials, transparent as wineglasses and fully a foot across, came floating like a flight of lost balloons above the river. A few of them drifted over to the hexapeds and settled gently on their backs, flattening over their withers like weird berets. Cordelia borrowed the scope for a closer look.
    "Do you suppose they could be like those birds from Earth, that pick the parasites off the cattle? Oh. No, I guess not."
    The hexapeds roused themselves with hisses and whistles, humping their bodies in a kind of obese bucking, and slid into the river. The radials, colored now like wineglasses filled with burgundy, inflated themselves and retreated into the air.
    "Vampire balloons?" asked Vorkosigan.
    "Apparently."
    "What appalling creatures."
    Cordelia almost laughed at his revolted look. "As a carnivore yourself, you can't really condemn them."
    "Condemn, no; avoid, yes."
    "I'll go along with that."
    They continued upstream past a frothing, opaque tan waterfall. After about a kilometer and a half they came to a place where two tributaries joined, and stumbled across at the shallowest place they could find. Crossing the second branch, Dubauer lost his footing as a rock turned under him, and went down with a wordless cry.
    Cordelia tightened her grip on his arm convulsively, and perforce went with him, slipping into a deeper area. Terror shook her, that he might be swept downstream beyond her reach—those amphibious hexapeds, sharp rocks—the waterfall! Careless of the water filling her mouth, she grabbed him with both hands. Here they went—no.
    Something pulled her bodily with a tremendous counter-surge against the rush of waters. Vorkosigan had grabbed her by the back of the belt, and was hauling them both toward the shallows with the strength and style of a stevedore.
    Feeling undignified, but grateful, she scrambled to her feet and pushed the coughing Dubauer up the far bank.
    "Thanks," she gasped to Vorkosigan.
    "What, did you think I'd let you drown?" he inquired wryly, emptying his boots.
    Cordelia shrugged, embarrassed. "Well—at least we wouldn't be delaying you."
    "Hm." He cleared his throat, but said no more. They found a rocky place to sit, eat their cereal and salad dressing, and dry awhile