Greenberg spread his hands in regret. "A hundred, perhaps, Highness, but not a thousand. The guns have only so much strength in them. When it is gone, they are useless, except as clubs."
Without flesh surrounding them, it was hard for K'Sed's eyes to show expression, but Jennifer thought he gave Greenberg a baleful stare. "And your ship?" the prince said. "What excuse will you give me there?"
"It is armed," Koniev admitted. K'Sed hissed again, this time with a now-we're-getting-somewhere kind of eagerness. Koniev, who was weapons officer when the Flying Festoon was offplanet, went on, "The weapons, unfortunately, function only out in space, where there is no air."
"No air? There is air everywhere," K'Sed said. T'Kai astronomy was about at the Ptolemaic level. The locals believed the humans when they said they came from another world; they and their goods were too unlike anything familiar. Not all the implications, though, had yet sunk in.
"I think we are all looking at this problem in the wrong way," Jennifer said.
Her crewmates all looked at her in surprise. Her silence through the uproarious meeting up to this point was very much in character. It wasn't just because she was only twenty-two and an apprentice. Had she been twice as old and a master merchant—not that she ever wanted to become a master merchant—she would have acted the same way.
"Tell us," Greenberg urged, in a tone that said he thought she was so quiet because she didn't operate in the same world as everyone else. "What have you seen that we've missed?" She flushed and did not answer. He growled, "Come on. His Highness doesn't care how pretty you are. Don't keep him waiting."
"I'm sorry, Master Merchant," she said, flushing even harder. It wasn't her fault she'd been born blond and beautiful. She rather wished she hadn't been; it kept people from taking her seriously. But Greenberg was right—to the T'Kai, she was as hideous and alien as the rest of the Soft Ones. The master merchant's glare forced more words from her. "We know, don't we, that there isn't much we can actually do against the M'Sak—" Her voice was small and breathy, barely enough to activate the translator.
"We don't know that," B'Rom said, not deigning to turn even one eyestalk Jennifer's way. "You Soft Ones keep saying it, but we do not know it."
The interruption flustered her. She took a while to get going again. At last she said, "Maybe the M'Sak also doubt we are as harmless as we really are—"
Sixteen eyestalks suddenly rose to their full length; sixteen eyes bored into Jennifer's two. She stopped, glancing toward Greenberg for support. He nodded encouragingly. "I think you have their attention," he said. He was fond of understatement.
"But what do I tell them now?" she asked.
"I haven't the slightest idea," he told her. "How do you think we'd look tricked out with a paint job and enough false legs and teeth to impersonate four f'noi?" The f'noi, which looked like an unlikely cross between a tiger and a lobster, was the worst predator this continent knew.
"You're baiting me!" Jennifer said. From some people, they would have been fighting words. She wished she could sound fierce instead of disappointed.
Marya Vassilis stepped into the breach. "We don't yet know your barbarous foes well," she reminded the prince and his retinue. "You will have to advise us on how we can best appear terrifying to them."
"Maybe even the sight of your ship will be enough," K'Sed said hopefully. "I do not think any Soft Ones have traded directly with the M'Sak."
"Why should they?" observed D'Kar, K'Sed's other consort, with what the translator rendered as a scornful sniff. She wore gold bands round all her walking-legs and had two rows of yellow garnets glued to her carapace. "The M'Sak are such low wretches, they surely have nothing worth trading for."
"Let them eat cake," Koniev quoted. No matter how well the computer translated, it could not provide social context. A good thing, too, Jennifer thought as the talk at last turned serious.
* * *
When they got back to the suite the humans had been modifying to their comfort for the past several months, Jennifer flopped down on her air mattress and put a reader on her nose. The mattress, a washbasin, and a chemical toilet were great improvements over the local equivalents. T'Kai sleeping gear, for instance, resembled nothing so much as a set of parallel bars.
Greenberg said something to her. Her attention was on the reader, so she didn't pay much attention. He coughed. She looked up. Her eyes took several seconds to focus on the real world.
"Thanks for the notion that got us going there," he repeated.
"Oh. Thank you very much. I wasn't sure what would come of it, but . . ." She hesitated. As often happened, the hesitation became a full stop.
"But anything was better than staying stuck where we were," Greenberg finished. "Yes." He was resigned to finishing sentences for her by now.
She went back to the reader, but still felt his eyes on her. She was used to looks from men, but on this cruise Greenberg and Koniev both seemed to have taken to Marya, though she was fifteen years older than Jennifer and lovely by the canon of no human world. To Jennifer, that was more a relief than anything else.
Greenberg said something to her. Again, she noticed that he said it, but not what it was. He repeated himself once more. "What are you reading?"
"Heinlein—one of the early Future History books." She'd loved Middle English science fiction ever since she was a child. It was all English; her father had taught her the ancient speech so young that she read it as fluently as she did Spanglish. She was also still young enough to think that everyone ought to love what she loved. "Would you like to borrow the fiche when I'm through with it?" she asked eagerly.
"More of your dead languages?" Greenberg asked her. She nodded. "No, thank you," he said. His voice was not ungentle, but her face fell. He went on, "I'm more interested in what's really here than in some ancient picture of a future that never happened."
"It's not so much the future he creates, but the way he does it," she said, trying to get across the fascination that rigorous world building had for her.
He shook his head. "I haven't the time or the inclination for it now. Illusions are all very well, but the M'Sak, worse luck, are real. I just hope illusory threats can chase them away. I have the bad feeling they won't. There's going to be some very real fighting before long, I'm afraid."
Jennifer nodded. As the meeting with the prince and his court was breaking up, a messenger had come in with bad news: C'Lar, one of the northern towns of the T'Kai confederacy, had fallen to the M'Sak. The T'Kai and their neighbors had been peaceful for several generations now. As K'Sed himself was uneasily aware, they were no match for the vigorous barbarians now emerging from the northern jungles.
But K'Sed intended to try, and nobody on the Flying Festoon had even brought up the idea of backing the other side. For one thing, T'Kai objets d'art brought the crew a tidy profit, trip after trip; that would vanish with a M'Sak conquest. For another, the M'Sak were not nice people, even for crabs. Their leader, V'Zek, seemed to have taken Chingis Khan lessons—he was both ruthless and extremely able.
Jennifer worried about that until the Heinlein story completely occupied her, but it was a distant sort of worry. If worse came to worst, the Flying Festoon could always lift off and leave.
K'Sed, of course, would not be so lucky.
* * *
V'Zek came down from his shelter and stepped away from it to watch the full moon rise. Many of his warriors felt anxious away from the trees they were used to, but he took the southlands' open spaces as a challenge, and he never met a challenge any way but claws-first.
Thus he did not pull in his eyestalks when he was away from the posts that held up his shelter and the web of ropes that imitated the closely twined branches of the jungle. And, indeed, there was a certain grandeur in seeing the great yellow shield unobscured by twigs and leaves.
He stretched his eyestalks as far as they would go, a grasping-claw's length from his cephalothorax. He drew a knife and brandished it at the moon. "Soon every
thing you shine on will be mine."
"The Soft Ones may perhaps have something to say about that, my master," a dry voice beside him observed. He hissed in surprise. He had not heard Z'Yon come up. The shaman could be eerily quiet when he chose.
"Soft Ones," V'Zek said, clicking his scorn. "They did not save C'Lar, nor will they save T'Kai when we reach it. I almost wonder if they exist at all. So much open space makes people imagine strange things."
"They exist," Z'Yon said. "They are one of the reasons I sought you out tonight. What do you plan to do about them?"
The chieftain clacked discontentedly. Since C'Lar fell, he had known the Soft Ones were real, but had tried to avoid thinking of them. Z'Yon was useful, because the shaman made him look at hard questions. "I will deal with them, if they care to deal with me," V'Zek said at last. "Some of their trinkets are amusing."
He thought of the mirror some grandee had owned in captured C'Lar. It was his now, of course. He admired the perfect reflection it gave. It was ever so much clearer than the polished bronze that was the best even T'Kai made. He had not known what a handsome fellow he was.
But Z'Yon would not leave off. "And if they do not?"
"Then I will kill them." V'Zek was very straightforward. That made him a deadly dangerous warleader—he saw an objective and went right after it. It also suited him to lead the M'Sak, whose characters were mostly similar to his own, if less intense. Z'Yon, though, did not think that way: another reason he was valuable to his chieftain.
The shaman let V'Zek's words hang in the air. V'Zek suspected his carapace was turning blue with embarrassment. Who knew what powers the Soft Ones had? "No rumor has ever spoken of them as killers," he said, the best defense of his belligerence he could come up with.
"No rumor has ever spoken of anyone attacking them, either," Z'Yon pointed out.
V'Zek knew that as well as the shaman. He changed the subject, a chiefly prerogative. "Why else did you want to see me?"
"To warn you, my master." When Z'Yon said that, V'Zek grew very alert. The shaman had smelled out plots before. But Z'Yon went on in a way his master had not looked for. "When the moon comes round to fullness again, unless I have misreckoned, the great f'noi that lives in the sky will seek to devour it." The M'Sak were not as intellectually sophisticated as the T'Kai, but their seekers-after-wisdom had watched the heavens through the trees for many years.
The chieftain cared nothing for such concerns. A superstitious chill ran through him; he felt his eyestalks contract of themselves. "It will fail?"
"It always has," Z'Yon reassured him. "Still, you might spend some time warning the warriors this will take place, so they are not taken by surprise and perhaps panic-stricken."
"Ah. That is sensible. Claim yourself any one piece of loot from my share of the booty of C'Lar." V'Zek was open-clawed with his gifts; who would stay loyal to a chieftain with a name for meanness?
Z'Yon lowered and raised his eyes, a thank-you gesture. "I wish I could have told you sooner, my master, but the campaign has disrupted my observations, and I did not become certain enough to speak until now."
"It is of no great moment." V'Zek settled back on his walking-legs. "Fifty-one days should be adequate time to prepare the fighters. By then, if all goes well, we will be attacking the city of T'Kai itself."
"Yes, and that is why you will need to harden the warriors' shells against fear. Think on it, my master: When the f'noi in the sky wounds the moon with its claws, what color does the moon turn as its blood spreads over it?"
V'Zek thought. He had seen such sky-fights a few times, watching as Z'Yon and the other shamans beat drums to frighten away the sky-f'noi. "The color of bronze, more or less . . ." The chieftain paused. "You are subtle."
"You see it too, then: When the heavenly f'noi attacks the moon, it will become the color of the T'Kai banners. That is an omen which, without careful preparation, common warriors might well see as disturbing."
"So they might." V'Zek opened and closed his upper grasping-claws while he thought, as if he wished to rend something. His left lower claw was never far from the shortspear strapped to his plastron. "Suppose the omen means that T'Kai will fall to us. Suppose that, till the evil night, you put that meaning about."
"Shall I consult the moltings, to seek the true significance of the phenomenon?"
"For your own amusement, if you like." That lower claw moved closer to the shortspear; Z'Yon felt his small, fanlike tail, of itself, fold under the rear of his abdomen. He did not need the reflex to know he was afraid; he felt the fear in his wits as well as his body. His chieftain went on, "Of course, you will present it to our warriors as I have given it to you now."
"Of course, my master." Z'Yon backed out of V'Zek's presence. When—actually, just before—he had gone a seemly distance, he turned and hurried away.
V'Zek let the slight breach of etiquette pass. He glowered up at the moon. Nothing would interfere with his plans for conquest: not the Soft Ones, whatever they really were, and not the moon, either. Nothing.
Having made that vow to himself, he returned at last to his shelter. The ropes and poles were a poor substitute for the fragrant, leafy branches he was used to. He let out a resigned hiss and wondered again how the southrons bore living away from the forests. Maybe, he thought, they were such skillful artificers exactly because they were trying to make up for what they lacked.
The why of it did not matter, though. They had been making their trinkets and trading them back and forth for so long that they forgot claws had any other uses. C'Lar had fallen even more easily than V'Zek had expected.
He composed himself for sleep. C'Lar was only the beginning.
* * *
Up on the battlements, Marya giggled. Jennifer took the reader off her nose for a moment so she could watch T'Kai's army march out of the city. The host looked martial enough to her, if uncertainly drilled. She asked, "What's funny?"
"It's just that I've never seen such a lot of tin openers on parade," Marya said.
Bernard Greenberg said, "They're on the big side for tin openers," but now he smiled, too. Marya had a point. Being armored themselves, the G'Bur had developed an assortment of weapons reminiscent of those of Earth's Middle Ages: halberds, bills, and partisans. All of them looked like big pieces of cutlery on long poles. On L'Rau, piercing and crushing took the place of slashing.
Pavel Koniev swung a wickedly spiked morning star, but his expression was sheepish. He said, "When the locals gave me this, I had visions of smashing the M'Sak army single-handed. But if they're all toting polearms, I won't be able to get close enough to them to do any good."
Jennifer went back to her reader; if not being described in Middle English, archaic weapons held little interest for her. Greenberg was saying, "It's a personal defense weapon, like the shortspears they carry. If you're close enough to have to use it, odds are we'll be in a lot of trouble." Out of the corner of her ear, she heard him click off his translator, in case one of the natives nearby was eavesdropping. He also lowered his voice. "We probably will be."
Marya and Koniev followed the master merchant's example. Jennifer would have, but she was engrossed in her Heinlein again. Marya said, "They seem willing enough to fight—which is more than I can say for their prince."
"I'm afraid he knows more than they do," Greenberg said. Down below, a couple of K'Sed's warriors were clicking and clacking at each other loud enough to draw even Jennifer's notice. They had gotten the heads of their weapons tangled and were holding up their whole section. Greenberg went on, "They're amateurs—smiths and taverners and carapace-painters and such. The M'Sak are professionals."
"We're amateurs, too," Koniev said.
"Don't remind me," Greenberg told him. "I'm just hoping we're amateurs at a higher level, so we can match up against G'Bur professionals."
"A higher level indeed," Marya said. "With the Flying Festoon and our drones and such, we'll be able to keep track of the barbarians and their route long before they kno
w where we are."
Greenberg said, "That will be for you to handle, Jennifer."
"Huh?" Hearing her name brought Jennifer back to the here and now. She lowered the reader from her nose and got the local sun full in the face. Blinking, she said, "I'm so sorry. What was that?"
"The drones." Greenberg sounded as if he were holding on to his patience with both hands.
"Oh, yes, the drones. Of course," Jennifer said. Unfortunately, she hadn't the faintest idea of what he wanted her to do with them. She knew he could tell, too. Her cheeks grew hot. When she wasn't preoccupied by her Middle English science fiction, she wanted to do well.
"I'll handle the drones, Bernard," Koniev said, seeing her confusion. "I've had experience with them."
"I know you have. That's why I'm giving them to Jennifer," Greenberg said. "She has to get some herself."
Koniev nodded. So did Jennifer; Greenberg had a way of making sense. Then she saw a sparkle of irony in Marya's dark eyes. She flushed all over again. Another reason Greenberg might want her back aboard the Flying Festoon was to keep her out of trouble. It didn't occur to her to wonder whether that meant trouble with the M'Sak or trouble with him.
Just then, K'Sed came over to the four humans. The prince of T'Kai had gone martial to the extent of carrying a ceremonial shortspear that did not look sharp enough to menace anything much more armored than a balloon. "Let us see what we can do," he said. For a moment, only Jennifer's translator picked up his words. Then the other traders switched theirs back on. The machines' flat tones did not make him sound martial.
Greenberg said, "Your Highness, we admire your courage in going forth to confront your enemies. Many princes might stay within the walls and try to withstand a siege."
"If I thought I could, Soft One, I would. But V'Zek, may his clasper's prongs fall out, would swallow my cities one by one, saving T'Kai for the last. Maybe the town can hold against him, maybe not. But the confederacy would surely die. Sometimes a bad gamble is all there is."
"Yes," Greenberg said.
"I thank you for making it better than it might be. Now I join my troops." K'Sed gestured jerkily with the shortspear and headed for the way down. That was neither stairs nor ramp, merely a double row of posts driven into the wall. With ten limbs, the G'Bur needed nothing more complex. Humans could use the posts, too, though less confidently.
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