"Come in with me," Marya said quietly.
Now the two men looked at each other. "Which one?" they asked together. They laughed, but without much mirth. Till now, they had never had any trouble sharing her affection… but there might not be another night after this one.
Marya knew that, too. "Both of you."
Greenberg and Koniev looked at each other again. They had never done that before. Koniev shrugged. Greenberg smiled.
"Come on, dammit," Marya said impatiently.
As the closing tent flap brushed him, Greenberg reflected that he had already decided it was no ordinary night.
In the Flying Festoon, Jennifer read fantasy and wished she were with the three traders. She had heard them all together when she called to ask if they'd come up with any new notions on how to use the starship in the upcoming battle. They hadn't; flying low and creating as much confusion as possible was the best thought they'd had. Jennifer got the idea their minds were elsewhere.
They could have invited me down, she thought. There would have been nothing to landing the Flying Festoon outside the T'Kai camp and then finding the brilliant tents the humans used. Except for Prince K'Sed's huge pavilion, they were the most conspicuous objects in camp.
But they had not asked her to come down, and she would not go anywhere she was not asked. She felt the hurt of that implied rejection, and the sadness. The three of them had a world in which she was not welcome. Maybe it's just because I'm younger than any of them, she told herself. She did not believe it. No matter what courses she had taken, she was not a trader. Greenberg must be sorry he had ever chosen her.
She gave herself back to her fantasy novel. It reminded her that she had a place of her own, too, in an intellectual world where she was up and coming, not all too junior and none too skilled. It also reminded her, unfortunately, that the nearest center of that world was some light-years away.
She began a fantasy of her own, one where she saved the Flying Festoon from hideous danger in space. The traders were ready to go into cold sleep and unfurl the light-sail for a sublight trip back to civilization that would surely last centuries. Somehow, armed with no more than a screwdriver and determination, she saved the hyperdrive.
She managed to laugh at herself. Even before spaceflight, that would have made god-awful science fiction. Here and now, it was simply ridiculous. If anything went wrong, the best she could do was scream for help; all other alternatives were worse.
She turned down the temperature in her cabin till it was just above chilly, then dug out blankets and wrapped them tight around her. She finally fell asleep, but it was not the sort of warm embrace she wanted to enjoy.
II
"They aren't four times our size, are they?" Prince K'Sed spoke with a certain amount of wonder as he studied the drawn-up ranks of the enemy.
"You knew that, Your Highness," Greenberg observed, hoping to hearten the T'Kai leader. "You've received M'Sak ambassadors often enough at your court."
"Ambassadors are different from soldiers," K'Sed answered. Now he could see the M'Sak were G'Bur much like the ones he commanded, but it did not seem to hearten him.
Eyeing the force ahead, Greenberg understood why the prince remained apprehensive. The ranks of the M'Sak were grimly still and motionless, while the T'Kai milled about and chattered as if they were still on march or, better image yet, gabbing about this and that while they tried to outdo one another in the marketplace. For the most part, they were merchants, not soldiers, by trade. The M'Sak, unfortunately, were soldiers.
The master merchant slowly realized that went deeper than the discipline the northern warriors showed. Everything about them was calculated to intimidate. Even their banners were the green of an angry G'Bur, not the unmartial bronze under which the T'Kai mustered. Greenberg wondered how many such clues he was missing but that were playing on the psyches of K'Sed and his army.
And yet, the T'Kai owned an edge no soldiers on L'Rau had ever enjoyed. "They cannot hide from us," he reminded K'Sed. "We will know all their concealed schemes and be able to counter them." Only once the words were out of his mouth did he stop to think the one might not be the same as the other.
Something of an odd color moved with a peculiar sinuous motion through the ranks of the T'Kai. V'Zek wondered if the southrons had lured ghosts to fight for them. Trying to suppress superstitious dread, he put the question to Z'Yon.
"Anything is possible, my master, but I have detected no signs of this," the shaman said. "I think you are seeing instead a Soft One."
V'Zek gave a clattery shudder of disgust. The Soft One moved like?like? V'Zek took a long time to find a comparison. Finally he thought of water pouring from a jug. That did not make him feel much better. Live things had no business moving like water pouring from a jug.
He waved to his drummers. Their thunder signaled his warriors forward. He spent only moments worrying about being watched from the sky. Once it was pike against pike, things would happen too fast for that to matter. And he felt fairly sure the sky-things could not read his thoughts. If they could, reading his hatred would have burned them down long since.
"They're advancing," Jennifer reported.
Greenberg's voice was dry as he answered, "I'd noticed. Let's check the screen and see what they're up to." After a pause, he spoke again. "Two lines, no particular weighting anywhere along them I can see. Whatever cards he's holding, he doesn't want to show them yet."
"No," Jennifer agreed. She paused herself, then added, "Maybe we shouldn't have let him get used to the idea of having the drones up there."
"Maybe we shouldn't. Why didn't you say something about that sooner?"
Jennifer hated blushing, but couldn't help it. Luckily, the link with Greenberg was voice-only. "I just thought of it now."
"Oh," Greenberg said. "Well, I didn't think of it at all, so how am I supposed to criticize you? We're all amateur generals here. I just hope it doesn't end up costing us. Do you suppose we shouldn't have shown the northerners the Flying Festoon, either?"
"We'll find out soon enough, don't you think?"
"Yes, I expect we will. This is a tad more empirical than I'd really planned on being, though. Wish us all luck."
"I do," Jennifer said. "You three especially, because you're on the ground."
The master merchant did not answer. Jennifer sighed. She sent the Flying Festoon whizzing low over the battlefield. The roar of cloven air filled the cabin when she activated the outside mike pickup. Then she shut it off again and turned on the ship's siren. It reverberated through the hull, even without amplification, and set her teeth on edge.
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.