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Fourteenth!"

    "Show yourselves," Daav ordered the bushes, and swept forward in a graceful lunge. He came up holding the long arm at ready. "Or die."

    Still the bushes were silent, the branches melting away from the one who came forward, hands out and empty.

    "There is one who is wounded," she said and looked over the scout's head to Nelirikk. He read the mark of an explorer on her cheek with a feeling of inevitability. Of course: A mere Rifle infiltrate the first line of guard, intent on giving his battle oath to Captain Miri Robertson? Common Troop did not behave—could not behave—in a manner so contrary to command. An explorer, however, like a scout, was required to think beyond the boundaries of the common. An explorer, like a scout, could easily claim the service of a Rifle, who would no more question her commands than he would the commands of any other officer.

    "Hold!" he snapped at Daav, but the scout had already lain the rifle down.

    "I do not shoot scouts," he said in calm Liaden. "Unless they give me cause."

    The explorer looked down at him. "No cause," she returned, her Liaden halting and modeless. "Wounded, one's senior. Wounded—" She moved her hands in frustration and looked again to Nelirikk. "He is at glory's gate," she finished, in Troop tongue.

    "Shadia?" Daav said quietly to the bushes.

    "Here, Captain Daav," the youngest scout's voice came from the bushes at the explorer's back, a bit breathless in the Liaden mode called 'Comrade'. "He doesn't look the picture of health, truth told." There was a pause and a low groan. The explorer twitched, and stilled, her eyes down turned.

    "Tell the sentry to send for a field 'doc," Shadia said flatly. "This man's dying."

    "We need a 'doc, quicktime," Nelirikk heard Clonak tell the sentry. "There's a man down and critical."

    "Mister, those're 'trang soldiers and all the 'trang I've seen lately want to die," the sentry argued.

    "Yet you will observe that these particular Yxtrang soldiers appear to wish to live. They're behaving appropriately, aren't they? They've put down their guns like good children and they're being very seemly, by my standards, at least," Clonak's voice hardened. "Call for an emergency team. Now. You really don't want the scout over there on the pathway angry with you."

    "Embroider my legend, do," Daav called, over the sound of a comm unit being engaged.

    Nelirikk watched the explorer, seeing her eyebrows pull tight as she strained to follow the conversation.

    "Medical assistance is being called for your senior," he told her in the language of the Troop.

    "Yes." She shot him a look of challenge. "You are Nelirikk Explorer, lieutenant in the troop captained by Miri Robertson. Will you take our oaths and receive us into the Troop in the captain's stead?"

    Certain as he was that the captain—and most certainly the scout—would welcome explorers into their service, and as well as he understood the dilemma behind the question, it was beyond the scope of his duty to stand as oathtaker in the captain's place.

    "I will not," he said, wishing the Common Tongue possessed even so minor a word as "alas".

    "What's amiss?" That was Daav yos'Phelium, speaking yet in the mode used between comrades, his bright black eyes darting from the explorer's face to Nelirikk's.

    Nelirikk sighed. "She—they—came to give an oath and be . . . welcomed . . . into a troop, with a proper captain, to give their lives form and, and duty. We—the 'doc . . . " He stammered to a halt. Both of Daav's eyebrows were well up, but he waited with explorer-like patience for the matter to be made plain.

    "It is cultural," Nelirikk achieved at last. "A matter of—appropriate behavior. They wish to—they must—offer their oath only to the captain or one who stands oathtaker in her stead. I—I cannot take oaths in keeping for the captain. And they cannot accept anything from the enemy."

    "Ah." The black eyes gleamed. "And your own oath—to Line