These days, V'Zek and his army almost ignored the drones that hung over them. Their buzzing still reached the chieftain's tympanic membrane, but he no longer heard it unless he made a deliberate effort. If the things were spying on him for the Soft Ones, then they were. He could do nothing about it, now that the drones kept out of missile range.

The M'Sak marched in a hollow square, with booty and prisoners inside. The army was smaller than it had been when it entered T'Kai territory, not so much from casualties as because V'Zek had left garrisons in the towns he had taken. He intended to rule this land, not just raid it. When the T'Kai finally came out to fight, he would still have enough warriors to deal with them.

"For that matter, they may just yield tamely," the chieftain said to Z'Yon, who was ambling along beside him. The shaman was not a large male, nor physically impressive, but had no trouble keeping up with the hulking youths who made up the bulk of V'Zek's army.

Z'Yon did not answer for a moment; he was chewing a f'leg-fruit he had snipped from a bush as he walked past. When he was done with it, he said, "I have to doubt that. The confederation is stronger to the south. I think they will try to meet us somewhere there."

"I begin to wonder. The southrons are such cowards," V'Zek said derisively.

"Such what?"

"Cowards," V'Zek said, a little louder. The noise from the sky was louder, too. The chieftain turned his eyestalks that way, wondering if the drones were dropping lower again for some reason of their own. If they were, he would have his troopers drive them up again?they should not be allowed to think they could get gay with the bold M'Sak.

But the sky-things were where they had always been.

"Don't take the T'Kai too lightly," Z'Yon warned. He also had to raise his voice. V'Zek felt his eyestalks shrink back toward his shell. That was not a thin buzz coming from the sky now; it was a roar. It got louder and louder and LOUDER. V'Zek's walking-legs bent under it, as if he had some great weight tied to his carapace.

Z'Yon pointed with a grasping-claw. V'Zek made an eyestalk follow it. Something else was in the sky that did not belong there. At first he thought it just a bright silver point, as if a star were to appear in daylight. But it got bigger with terrifying speed?it became a shining fruit, a ball, and then, suddenly, the chieftain realized it was a metal building falling toward him. No wonder his legs were buckling!

He no longer heard the noise of its approach, but felt it as a vibration that seemed to be trying to tear his shell from his flesh. He looked up again, willing one eye to follow the sky-building as it descended. Would it crush him? No, not quite, he saw.

The roar continued to build, even after the thing was down on the ground in front of the M'Sak host. Then all at once it ended, and silence seemed to ache as much as clamor had a moment before.

"The Soft Ones!" Z'Yon was shrieking.

V'Zek wondered how long the shaman had been talking, or rather, screaming. "What about them?" he said. His own voice echoed brassily on his tympanic membrane.

"It's their ship," Z'Yon said.

"Well, who cares?" the chieftain growled. Now that the accursed noise had stopped, he was able to think again, and the first thing he thought about was his army.

When he looked back over his cephalothorax and tail, he let out a whistle of fury. His army, his precious, invincible army, was in full flight, dashing in all directions.

"Come back!" he bellowed. He chose the one line that had even a tiny chance of turning the warriors. "The prisoners are escaping with our loot!"

That made eyestalks whip around where nothing else would have. He saw he had not even been lying: captives from C'Lar and other towns were scuttling this way and that, with baskets on their carapaces and in their grasping-claws. He sprang after one and swung down his axe. It bit through the poor fellow's shell, which was softened by recent privation. Body fluids spurted. The prisoner fell. V'Zek slew one of his own soldiers, one who was running.

The chieftain reared back on his hindmost pair of legs, waved the dripping axe on high. "Rally!" he cried. "Rally!" A few officers took up the call. V'Zek fought and killed another would-be fugitive. The warriors began to regroup. They had feared their master for years, the unknown from out of the sky only for moments.

Then an even louder voice came from the sky-thing, roaring in the T'Kai dialect, "Go away! Leave this land! Go away!"

V'Zek understood it perfectly well. Most of his soldiers could follow it after a fashion; the M'Sak language and that of the southrons were cousins. The chieftain thought the sky-thing made a mistake by speaking. Had it remained silent and menacing, he could not have fought it, for it would have given him nothing to oppose. This way?

"It's a trick!" he shouted. "It's the accursed T'Kai, trying to run us off without fighting us!"

"Doing a good job, too!" one of his fleeing soldiers cried.

The fellow was too far away for him to catch and kill. V'Zek had to rely on persuasion instead, a much less familiar technique. Still, with the full power of his book lungs, he said, "It hasn't harmed us. Will you run from noise alone? Do you run from thunder and lightning?"

"Not bad," Z'Yon said beside him. Then he, too, raised his voice. "If this is the best the T'Kai can do, you warriors should be ashamed. Our master has the right of it: a good thunderstorm back home is more frightening than this big hunk of ironmongery ever could be. If it smites us, that is the time to worry. Till then, it's only so much wind."

As an aside to V'Zek, he added, "If it smites us, I suspect we'll be too dead to worry about anything." But only the chieftain heard him; Z'Yon knew what he was doing.

Long-ingrained discipline, the fear of losing plunder, and the sky-thing's failure to do anything more than make threatening noises slowly won the day for V'Zek. The M'Sak reclaimed most of their captives and most of their loot. They re-formed their ranks and, giving the building that had fallen from the sky a wide berth, resumed their march south.

V'Zek wanted more than that. He wanted revenge for the sky-building's nearly having put paid to his whole campaign. He sent a squad of halberdiers against it. Their weapons were good for cracking shells; he wanted to see what they would do against that gleaming metal skin.

He never found out. The sky-thing emitted such a piercing screech that he, no short distance away, drew in his eyestalks in a wince of pain. His warriors dropped their polearms and fled. Most returned to their troop, but two dashed straight for Z'Yon: the shaman was the army's chief healer.

Z'Yon examined them, gave them a salve, and sent them back to the comrades. When he turned back to V'Zek, his hesitancy showed the chieftain he was troubled. "The salve will soothe a bit. It will do no more. Their tympanic membranes are ruptured."

"Deafened, are they?" V'Zek glowered at the flying building. He only glowered, though. If the thing really could be dangerous when provoked, he would not provoke it. He had more important things to do than pausing for vengeance in the middle of his attack on T'Kai.

But once he had broken the confederacy, he told himself, the Soft Ones?or whoever was in charge of the sky-thing?would pay for trying to thwart him. Anticipating that was almost as sweet as wondering how many days he could keep Prince K'Sed alive before he finally let him die.

Browns and greens chased each other across K'Sed's carapace as he looked at the M'Sak army in the vision screen. His eyestalks pulled in a little. He noticed and lengthened them again, but Greenberg caught the involuntary admission of fear. "They are still advancing," the prince said. The translator's flat tones could not sound accusing, but the master merchant knew what he would have felt in K'Sed's shoes.