Tactics of Mistake — Gordon R. Dickson

One man, one world, against all comers.

It's obvious that Cletus Graeme--limping, mild-mannered, scholarly--doesn't belong on a battlefield. He's published three books on strategy and tactics, and is working on his fourth: doubtless a worthy pursuit, but hardly practical.

But Graeme has come to Bakhalla as a light colonel on assignment with the Allied forces there. And at the moment, Bakhalla has a lot more battlefields than it has libraries. There's a nasty little war going on, as Bakhalla fights for survival against the massed troops of its neighbor, the Coalition-backed colony of Neuland.

For Cletus Graeme, it's ideal. He commands a small force of Dorsai, soldiers of fortune who sell their lives in foreign wars to feed their families back home. Graeme sees in them a spark of greatness, and a perfect opportunity to test his theories. But if his theories or his belief in the Dorsai lead him astray, he's a dead man.