“Females—” Angrek’s eyes shifted to the forecastle. A lickerish light rose in them.

“After all,” he murmured, “it’s not as if they were our females—”

A score or more Lannachska were already drifting in that same direction, elaborately casual — but their wings were held stiff and their tails twitched. It was noteworthy that more of the recent oarsmen were in that group than any other class.

Wace came running to the forecastle’s edge. He leaned over it, cupped his hands and shouted: “Freeman van Rijn! Look upstairs!”

“So.” The merchant raised pouched little eyes, blinked, sneezed, and blew his craggy nose. One by one, the Lannachska resting on scarred bloody decks lifted their own gaze skyward. And a stillness fell on them.

Up there, the struggle was ending.

Delp had finally assembled his forces into a single irresistible mass and taken them down as a unit to sea level. There they joined the embattled raft crews — one raft at a time. A Lannachska boarding party, so suddenly and grossly outnumbered, had no choice but to flee, abandon even its own ice ship, and go up to Trolwen.

The Drak’honai made only one attempt to recapture a raft which was fully in Lannacha possession. It cost them gruesomely. The classic dictum still held, that purely air-borne forces were relatively impotent against a well-defended unit of the Fleet.

Having settled in this decisive manner exactly who held every single raft, Delp reorganized and led a sizable portion of his troops aloft again to engage Trolwen’s augmented air squadrons. If he could clear them away, then, given the craft remaining to Drak’ho plus total sky domination, Delp could regain the lost vessels.

But Trolwen did not clear away so easily. And, while naval fights such as Van Rijn had been waging went on below, a vicious combat traveled through the clouds. Both were indecisive.

Such was the overall view of events, as Tolk related it to the humans an hour or so later. All that could be seen from the water was that the sky armies were separating. They hovered and wheeled, dizzingly high overhead, two tangled masses of black dots against ruddy-tinged cloud banks. Doubtless threats, curses, and boasts were tossed across the wind between them, but there were no more arrows.

“What is it?” gasped Angrek. “What’s happening up there?”

“A truce, of course,” said Van Rijn. He picked his teeth with a fingernail, hawked, and patted his abdomen complacently. “They was making nowheres, so finally Tolk got someone through to Delp and said let’s talk this over, and Delp agreed.”

“But — we can’t — you can’t bargain with a Draka! He’s not… he’s alien!”

A growl of goose-pimpled loathing assent went along the weary groups of Lannachska.

“You can’t reason with a filthy wild animal like that,” said Angrek. “All you can do is kill it. Or it will kill you!”

Van Rijn cocked a brow at Wace, who stood on the deck above him, and said in Anglic: “I thought maybe we could tell them now that this truce is the only objective of all our fighting so far — but maybe not just yet, nie?”

“I wonder if we’ll ever dare admit it,” said the younger man.

“We will have to admit it, this very day, and hope we do not get stuffed alive with red peppers for what we say. After alls, we did make Trolwen and the Council agree. But then, they are very hard-boiled-egg heads, them.” Van Rijn shrugged. “Comes now the talking. So far we have had it soft. This is the times that fry men’s souls. Ha! Have you got the nerve to see it through?”

XIX

Approximately one tenth of the rafts lumbered out of the general confusion and assembled a few kilometers away. They were joined by such ice ships as were still in service. The decks of all were jammed with tensely waiting warriors. These were the vessels held by Lannach.

Another tenth or so still burned, or had been torn and beaten by stonefire until they were breaking up under Achan’s mild waves. These were the derelicts, abandoned by both nations. Among them were many dugouts, splintered, broken, kindled, or crewed only by dead Drak’honai.

The remainder drew into a mass around the admiral’s castle. This was no group of fully manned, fully equipped rafts and canoes; no crew had escaped losses, and a good many vessels were battered nearly into uselessness. If the Fleet could get half their normal fighting strength back into action, they would be very, very lucky.

Nevertheless, this would be almost three times as many units as the Lannachska now held in toto. The numbers of males on either side were roughly equal; but, with more cargo space, the Drak’honai had more ammunition. Each of their vessels was also individually superior: better constructed than an ice ship, better crewed than a captured raft.

In short, Drak’ho still held the balance of power.

As he helped Van Rijn down into a seized canoe, Tolk said wryly: “I’d have kept my armor on if I were you, Eart’a. You’ll only have to be laced back into it, when the truce ends.”

“Ah.” The merchant stretched monstrously, puffed out his stomach, and plumped himself down on a seat. “Let us suppose, though, the armistice does not break. Then I will have been wearing that bloody-be-smeared corset all for nothings.”

“I notice,” added Wace, “neither you nor Trolwen are cuirassed.”

The commander smoothed his mahogany fur with a nervous hand. “That’s for the dignity of the Flock,” he muttered. “Those muck-walkers aren’t going to think I’m afraid of them.”

The canoe shoved off, its crew bent to the oars, it skipped swiftly over wrinkled dark waters. Above it dipped and soared the rest of the agreed-on Lannacha guard, putting on their best demonstration of parade flying for the edification of the enemy. There were about a hundred all told. It was comfortlessly little to take into the angered Fleet.

“I don’t expect to reach any agreement,” said Trolwen. “No one can — with a mind as foreign as theirs.”

“The Fleet peoples are just like you,” said Van Rijn. “What you need is more brotherhood, by damn. You should bash in their heads without this race prejudice.”

“Just like us?” Trolwen bristled. His eyes grew flat glass-yellow. “See here, Eart’a—”

“Never mind,” said Van Rijn. “So they do not have a rutting season. So you think this is a big thing. All right. I got some thinkings to make of my own. Shut up.”

The wind ruffled waves and strummed idly on rigging . The sun struck long copper-tinged rays through scudding cloudbanks, to walk on the sea with fiery footprints. The air was cool, damp, smelling a little of salty life. It would not be an easy time to die, thought Wace. Hardest of all, though, to forsake Sandra, where she lay dwindling under the ice cliffs of Dawrnach. Pray for my soul, beloved, while you wait to follow me. Pray for my soul.

“Leaving personal feelings aside,” said Tolk, “there’s much in the commander’s remarks. That is, a folk with lives as alien to ours as the Drakska will have minds equally alien. I don’t pretend to follow the thoughts of you Eart’ska: I consider you my friends, but let’s admit it, we have very little in common. I only trust you because your immediate motive — survival — has been made so clear to me. When I don’t quite follow your reasoning, I can safely assume that it is at least well-intentioned.

“But the Drakska, now — how can they be trusted? Let’s say that a peace agreement is made. How can we know they’ll keep it? They may have no concept of honor at all, just as they lack all concept of sexual decency. Or, even if they do intend to abide by their oaths, are we sure the words of the treaty will mean the same thing to them as to us? In my capacity of Herald, I’ve seen many semantic misunderstandings between tribes with different languages. So what of tribes with different instincts?