She studied the pictures the drones gave her. After reading about so many imaginary battles in Middle English, she fancied herself a marshal. She soon discovered the job was, as with most jobs, easier to imagine than to do. She found no magic strategic key to V'Zek's maneuvers. If anything, she thought him over-optimistic, advancing as he was against a strong defensive front: the T'Kai right was protected by a river, the left anchored by high ground and a stand of trees.

She wondered if he knew something she didn't, and hoped finding out wouldn't be too expensive.

B'Rom sidled up to Greenberg crabwise?an adverb the master merchant applied to few G'Bur but the vizier. "Soon now," B'Rom declared. The translator should have given his clicks, hisses, and whistles a furtive quality, but that, sadly, was beyond its capabilities.

"Soon what?" Greenberg asked, a trifle absently. Most of his attention was on the forest of oversized cutlery bearing down on the T'Kai. The Flying Festoon's histrionics left his ears stunned. He hoped the M'Sak were quaking in the boots they didn't wear.

Then his head whipped around, for B'Rom said, "Soon the assassination, of course. What better time than when the savages are in the midst of their attack?"

"None, I suppose," Greenberg mumbled. His hand eased on the stunner. Maybe he wouldn't have to use it after all.

The racket overhead was appalling and confusing, but V'Zek was proud of the way his warriors pressed on toward the waiting enemy. The Soft Ones had blundered in showing their powers too soon. That relieved V'Zek: ghosts or spirits never would have made such a foolish mistake. The Soft Ones were natural, then, no matter how weird they looked. V'Zek was confident he could handle anything natural.

A warrior whose carapace was painted with a messenger's red stripes rushed up to the chieftain. V'Zek's eyestalks drew together in slight perplexity?what could be so urgent, when the two armies had not even joined? Then the fellow's left front grasping-claw pulled a war hammer from its concealed sheath under his plastron. He swung viciously at the M'Sak chieftain.

Only V'Zek's half-formed suspicion let him escape unpunctured. He sprang to one side. The hammerhead slammed painfully against him between right front and rear grasping-legs, but the chisel point did not penetrate. By the time the would-be assassin struck again, V'Zek had out his own shortspear. He turned the blow and gave back a counterthrust his enemy beat aside.

Then half a ten M'Sak were battling the false messenger. Before their chieftain could shout for them to take him alive, he had fallen, innards spurting from a score of wounds. "Are you all right, my master?" one of the soldiers gasped.

V'Zek flexed both right-side grasping-legs. He could use them. "Well enough." He looked closely at the still shape of his assailant. The curve of the shell was not quite right for a M'Sak. "Does anyone know him?"

None of the warriors spoke.

"I suppose he is of T'Kai," the chieftain said. The soldiers shouted angrily. So did V'Zek, but his fury was cold. He had wanted the southrons for what they could yield him and his people. Now he also had a personal reason for beating them. He reminded himself not to let that make him break away from his carefully devised plan. "Continue the advance, as before," he ordered.

"Some sort of confusion for a moment there around the chieftain." Jennifer's voice sounded in Greenberg's ear. With the M'Sak so close, he had put away the vision screen. He let out his breath in a regretful sigh when she reported, "It seems to be over now."

"Damn." Marya and Koniev said it together. All three humans were on the right wing?the right claw, they would say on L'Rau?of the T'Kai army, not far from the river. Since V'Zek led the invaders from their right, he was most of a kilometer away, out of their view.

Closer and closer came the M'Sak. They were shouting fiercely, but the din from the Flying Festoon outdid anything they could produce. "Shoot!" cried an underofficer.

G'Bur held bows horizontally in front of themselves with their front pair of grasping-claws, using the rear pair to load arrows?sometimes one, sometimes a pair?and draw the weapons. The M'Sak archers shot back at the T'Kai, lofting arrows with chisel-headed points to descend on their foes' backs.

Every so often, a warrior on one side or the other would collapse like a marionette whose puppeteer had suddenly dropped the strings. More commonly, the shafts would skitter away without piercing their targets. Exoskeletons had advantages, Greenberg thought.

An arrow buried itself in the ground less than a meter from his left boot. He shuffled sideways and bumped into Marya, who was unconsciously moving away from an arrow that had landed to her right. Their smiles held little humor. She said, "Shall we give them something to think about?"

Greenberg and Koniev both nodded. The three humans leveled their stunners at the M'Sak. The gun twitched slightly in the master merchant's hand as it fed stun charges one after another into the firing chamber.

One after another, M'Sak began dropping; pikes and halberds fell from nerveless grasping-claws. The invaders' advance, though, took a long moment to falter. Greenberg realized the M'Sak, intent on the enemies awaiting them, hadn't noticed their comrades were going down without visible wounds.

Then they did notice, and drew up in confusion and fear: for all they knew, the felled warriors were dead, not stunned. Greenberg took careful aim and knocked down a M'Sak whose halberd had a fancy pennon tied on below the head?an officer, he hoped. "Good shot!" Koniev cried, and thumped him on the back.

"I only wish we had a couple of thousand charges instead of a hundred or so," Marya said, dropping another M'Sak. "That would end that, and in a hurry, too."

By no means normally an optimist, Greenberg answered, "We're doing pretty well as is." The M'Sak left was stalled; had they been humans, the master merchant would have thought of them as rocked back on their heels.

The officers who led the T'Kai right did not have that concept?or heels, for that matter?but they recognized disorder when they saw it. "Advance in line!" they ordered.

The T'Kai raised a rattling cheer and moved forward. They chopped and thrust at their foes, who gave ground. For a heady moment, Greenberg thought the M'Sak would break and run.

They did not. Faced by an assault of a sort with which they were familiar, the invaders rallied. Their polearms stabbed out at the T'Kai, probing for openings. The opposing lines came to close quarters. For a long time, motion either forward or backward could be measured in bare handfuls of meters.

The humans stopped shooting. They had to be careful with charges, and friend and foe were so closely intermingled now that a shot was as likely to fell a T'Kai as an M'Sak. If the enemy broke through, stunners could be of value again. Without armor, the humans were useless in the front line.

Koniev laughed nervously as he watched the struggle not far away. He said, "I never thought there would be so much waiting inside a battle."

"I notice you're still holding your stunner, not your mace," Marya said.

Koniev looked down as if he had not been sure himself. "So I am." The mace was on his belt. He touched it with his left hand. "If I have to use this thing, odds are we'll be losing. I'd sooner win."

Greenberg's own personal defense weapon was a war hammer. He had almost forgotten it; now he noticed it brush against his thigh, felt its weight on his hip. He nodded to himself. He would just as soon go on pretending it wasn't there.