Moonwa called, “Perilack, Silack, Manack, Coriack—” Four small heads lifted. “-these are more allies: Kaywerbrimmis, Valavirgillin, Whandernothtee.”
The Gleaners smiled and bobbed their heads, but they didn’t come up at once. They moved off to where Grass Giants were carefully stripping their sheets off inside out, well away from the dead and the tent, then picking up scythes and crossbows. The Gleaners stripped off their contaminated sheets, then hung slender swords behind their backs.
Beedj approached, sheetless and armed. “Towels under the tent. We rubbed minch on them,” he said. “Welcome to all.”
Gleaners stood armpit-high to Machine People, navel-high to Beedj and Moonwa. Their faces were hairless and pointed; their smiles were wide and toothy, a bit much. They wore tunics of cured smeerpskin with the beige fur left on, lavishly decorated with feathers. On the women, Perilack and Coriack, the feather patterns formed smallish wings. The women had to walk with some care to protect them. Manack and Silack looked much like the women. Their clothing showed greater differences; feathered, but with arms free to swing. Or fight.
Rain spattered down, just enough to send the Machine People into the tent. Vala saw grass piled thickly on the floor. Grass for bedding and to feed the Grass Giants. She stopped her companions until they had taken off their sandals.
Already it was dark enough that Vala could barely see faces. Rishathra was best begun in the night.
But not on a battlefield.
“This is a bad business,” Perilack said.
Whandernothtee asked, “How many have you lost?”
“Nearly two hundred by now.”
“We were only ten. Four are gone. Sopashintay and Chitakumishad we left on guard above us with the cannon. Barok is recovering from a night in hell.”
“Our queen’s man went with the Thurl’s woman to bring other hominids to bargain. If the—” The little woman’s eyes flickered about her. “-lords of the night do not speak, other voices will join ours tomorrow.”
Legend told that the Ghouls heard any word spoken of them, unless-some said-during broad daylight. The Ghouls might be all about them even now.
Kay asked, “Would your queen’s man truly rish with his traveling companions?”
The four Gleaners tittered. Beedj and Moonwa boomed their laughter. A little woman-Perilack-said to Kay, “If the Grass Giant women would notice. Size matters. But you, you and we might make something happen.”
Perilack and Kaywerbrimmis looked at each other as if both taken by the same notion. The little woman took Kay’s elbow; Kay’s arm brushed the Gleaner’s feathers. He suggested, “I expect you accumulate these faster than you can use them?”
She said, “No, the skins spoil quickly. We can trade a few, not many.”
“What if we could find a way to delay the spoilage?”
From time to time Valavirgillin would catch a foul whiff of battlefield stench and snort it out. But the smells weren’t reaching Kaywerbrimmis. Not him! Kay was into trader mode. His mind was in a place where win and lose were a matter of numbers, where discomfort was an embarrassment one could not afford, where an empire survived because one hominid’s trash was another’s ore bed.
Full night had fallen. But by the faint flash of an arc of daylit Arch, she saw Beedj’s broad grin. She asked the Grass Giant, “Have you watched bargaining sessions?”
“Some. Louis Wu came when I was a child, but agreements were all between him and the old Thurl. The Reds made peace with us thirty falans ago; we parceled up habitats. Twenty-four falans ago we gathered with the Reds and Sea People, shared maps. All peoples have learned things about the new territory. But all find Grass Giants awkwardly large.”
A polite disclaimer would not be believed. Vala reached up to grasp elbows with the Grass Giant. She’d been listening for Ghouls in the night, but the only sound was the rain.
The clouds had closed. It had become full dark.
One of the Gleaner men asked, “Should we only wait? Would they find that more polite?”
Manack, wasn’t it? Hair thicker around the throat, as if he were an alpha male and Silack a beta. In a good many hominid species, one male got most of the action; but Vala didn’t know that about Gleaners.
Vala said, “Manack, we’re here. In their habitat. You may even consider that we’ve come to entertain the lords of the night. Will you share rishathra?” To Beedj she quickly added, “Beedj, this is for size, to leave me larger. I expect Whand will go with Moonwa first…” Though Kay and Perilack, she noticed, were no longer talking business. Philosophies differ.
To rish with a Gleaner male was no more than foreplay.
Rishathra with the Thurl’s heir was something else again. It had its pleasures. He was big. He was very eager. He was very proud of his self-restraint, though it was right at the edge of his control. He was very big.
Kaywerbrimmis was having a wonderful night, or seemed to be. He was sharing some joke or secret with Moonwa now. Good trader, that one; a generally good man. Vala kept looking in his direction.
They’d mated. Vala couldn’t get her mind out of that mode… shouldn’t try, really. It was a good mind-set for a rishathra party. Still.
Mating is a matter of order. Eons of evolution have shaped many hominid’s mating responses: approach, scents, postures and positions, visual and tactile cues. Culture shapes more: dances, cliques, styles, permitted words and phrases.
But evolution never touches sex outside one’s species, and rishathra is always an art form. Where shapes don’t fit, other shapes might be found. Those who cannot participate can watch, can give ribald advice…
Can stand guard, for that matter, when a trader’s body or mind needs a rest.
The night was almost silent, but not every whisper was wind. Ghouls should be out there. It was their duty. But if for any reason word hadn’t reached them of a corpse-strewn battlefield, then those sounds might be vampires.
Vala perched on a stool three paces high and sturdy enough for a Grass Giant. The night was warm enough for nakedness, or she was, but loaded guns were on her back. Before her was blowing rain and little else to see. At her back any excitement had died for the moment.
“We and the Grass Giants, we love each other, but we’re not mere parasites,” one of the Gleaners was saying. “Wherever there once were mirror-flower forests, there are plant eaters now, prey that can feed us. We forage ahead of the Thurl’s people. We probe, we guide, we make their maps.”
Manack, that was. He was a bit small to accommodate even a Machine People woman, and inexperienced; but he could learn. The proper attitude was easy for some. Others never learned it.
Mating has consequences. A hominid’s response to mating is not of the mind. Rishathra has no consequences, and the mind may remain in command. Embarrassment is inappropriate. Laughter is always to be shared. Rishathra is entertainment and diplomacy and friendship, and knowing that you can reach your weapons in the dark.
“We hope to make our fortunes,” Kay was saying. “Those who extend the Empire are well-treated. The Empire grows with our fuel supply. If we can persuade a community to make fuel and sell it to the Empire, the bonus would let each of us raise a family.”
Moonwa said, “Those rewards are yours. Your client tribes face something else. Loss of ambition, loss of friends and mates, delusion and early death for any who learn to drink your fuel.”
“Some are too weak to say, ‘Enough.’ Moonwa, you must be stronger than that.”
“Of course. I can do that tonight, now. Enough, Kaywerbrimmis!”
Vala turned to see white grins large and small. Beedj said, “I wore one of your fuel wetted towels last night. It made me dizzy. It threw my aim off.”