What little cooperation overmen did display had been forced upon them by events, and its forms had usually been learned from the humans they despised. Marriage was a human invention that overmen had adopted because it simplified family responsibilities and inheritances. Cities facilitated trade and government-but even so, the overmen had only one in all the Northern Waste, and it sprawled over several square miles of coastline and hill with a population of less than five thousand, the houses strewn randomly about the countryside rather than laid along streets.

For that matter, nobody actually knew what the population of Ordunin or of the Waste was, as, there had never been sufficient cooperation to conduct a census.

This camp, then, seemed typical of overmen when there was no strong organization and leader forcing them to behave. He knew, from his own military experiences in battling the pirates who occasionally raided Ordunin, that overmen could be made to form a coherent fighting unit-but it was extraordinarily difficult. Where one human officer might reasonably hope to manage a hundred soldiers in an emergency, each overman had commanded no more than ten, at the very most; three was better. Every two or three officers then needed a commander.

And here, sixty overmen were under two co-commanders with no intermediate organization apparent.

Had the expedition been set up properly, there would have been a supply train accompanying it, including a herd of goats to feed the warbeasts and a good stock of replacement armor and weaponry. There would be three captains, he thought, each with two lieutenants, each with two sergeants, each with three or four soldiers. The tents would have been set up in some pattern and the warbeasts tethered in a ring around the camp, to serve as the first line of defense.

Kyrith and Galt emerged from the tent, and he put aside his thoughts. Galt blinked at the daylight; the sky was finally beginning to clear. "Greetings, Garth," he said.

"Greetings, Galt. What are you doing here? What is this so-called siege supposed to do?"

"Don't blame me for the siege; that was Kyrith's idea, and I was overruled."

"What are you doing here in the first place?"

"We came to speak with the Baron of Skelleth. Kyrith didn't believe that you had gone off on your own willingly; she thought that the Baron had you prisoner somewhere in Skelleth or had killed you, and she gathered these volunteers to come find you. The City Council sent me along. We had intended to ride into the village, confront the Baron, present our demands, and settle the matter on the spot, preferably by gracefully accepting his capitulation."

"You needed sixty armed overmen for that?"

"As we both know, Garth, the Baron of Skelleth takes a great interest in military matters. Your disappearance gave us sufficient excuse for a show of force, which, it was felt, might serve to convince him where simple negotiation would not."

Galt's smooth manner irritated Garth. He snapped, "It didn't work?"

"It might have succeeded, had the Baron met with us. Unfortunately, we were told, with much sincere regret, that he was sick in bed and could not see us. We did not care to force the issue then and there, but Kyrith was unwilling to do nothing; hence the siege."

"The Baron refused to see you, and you simply left town?"

"We set up the siege."

"Siege! You call this farce a siege?"

Galt shrugged, and Garth's annoyance grew.

"You accepted the word of the humans that the Baron was ill? You did not insist upon seeing him?"

"No. The captain of the guard swore by half a dozen gods I never heard of and by various parts of his anatomy that the Baron was ill in bed. I spoke last night with the man called Saram, whom you know and whom I believe you trust, and he told me that the Baron's illness is legitimate-a side-effect of his madness."

"Did it not occur to any of you that it would be far more effective to camp in the marketplace, where you could not be so easily ignored or put off, rather than to establish a siege you cannot possibly maintain? Furthermore, a single message slipped past your pitiful line of sentries could bring the wrath of the entire Kingdom of Eramma down on you and on the Northern Waste, since a siege is undeniably an act of war. Had you camped peacefully in the square, you would have been honest petitioners, breaking no laws."

Galt was slow to reply. "Such an audacious action did not occur to me."

"Audacious? The Baron of Skelleth is the audacious one! He dares to dictate terms to overmen as if we were mere peasants? To refuse your embassy an audience? It is time that we showed him the error of his ways. I propose that we march back into town; if he will still not speak with us, we will camp in the market until he does."

"I am not sure that would be wise. I did not approve of the siege, but I think that your plan faces the same objections. We dare not push the Baron too far; we need this trade with Skelleth."

"No, we don't. We can trade anywhere we please. The Racial Wars are over, Galt, whatever we may have believed while isolated in the Northern Waste, and regardless of what the Baron of Skelleth may have told us. I have just returned from a city called Dыsarra, where overmen are an everyday sight. The humans have forgotten their fear and hatred; remember how short their lives are! To them, three centuries are a dozen generations, almost five lifetimes."

"How can overmen be a common sight anywhere outside the Northern Waste?"

"Ah, this is the best news of all! There are overmen living on the Yprian Coast. We are not the only survivors."

"The Yprian Coast? That barren wasteland?"

"Is the Northern Waste any better?"

Galt did not answer that. Instead, he asked, "Are you sure we could trade elsewhere?"

"At the very least, we could trade with the Yprians and with Dыsarra. I think we could probably go anywhere we pleased without interference; humans care more for gold than for ancient hatreds."

"Still, any overland trade route would have to go through the Barony of Skelleth; it extends from the Yprian Gulf to the Sea of Mori."

"What of it? Do you think the Baron's thirty-odd guardsmen can patrol the entire border?"

"It would still be preferable to have the Baron's permission."

"Yes, it would be preferable, but it is not necessary, and it would also be preferable to make plain to all that overmen are not to be treated with the disrespect the Baron of Skelleth has displayed."

While Galt digested this, Kyrith scribbled on her tablet, then handed it to Garth. It read, "What disrespect? Why not go home?"

He handed it back. "No, Kyrith, I can't go home yet. I can't go back to Ordunin until the Baron releases me from my oath."

She made a questioning gesture.

Garth said, "What are you asking?"

She wrote and handed him the tablet. It read: "What oath?"

"Galt should have told you," Garth replied. "He was there. I swore an oath to the Baron of Skelleth when last I saw him. He proposed that in order to remove all legal impediments to trade between Skelleth and the Waste and to put a formal end to the war with Eramma, I, as Prince of Ordunin, should surrender and swear fealty to him, thereby making Ordunin and its territory-which is to say, the entire eastern half of the Northern Waste part of the Barony of Skelleth. He called this a simple and reasonable thing, but we both knew he devised it to humiliate me, as I had humiliated him once before. He insisted that I swear to present this proposal to the City Council as soon as I returned to Ordunin. I was unarmed, on a peaceful trading mission, and caught off-guard; I swore the oath he demanded. I will not present any such disgraceful scheme to the City Council, however. Therefore, if I am not to break my sworn word, I cannot return to Ordunin until the Baron releases me from my vow. This is one reason we must confront him, quite aside from trading concessions or my exile from Skelleth; he must release me. He will release me. He will release me, or I will kill him."