“Or I wonder… can we even trust ourselves to keep such a pledge? We do not hate anyone merely for having fought us. But we hate dishonor, perversion, uncleanliness. How can we live with ourselves, if we make peace with creatures whom the gods must loathe?”

He sighed and looked moodily ahead to the nearing rafts.

Wace shrugged. “Has it occurred to you, they are thinking very much the same things about you?” he retorted.

“Of course they are,” said Tolk. “That’s yet another hailstorm in the path of negotations.”

Personally, thought Wace, I’ll be satisfied with a temporary settlement. Just let them patch up their differences long enough for a message to reach Thursday Landing. (How?) Then they can rip each other’s throats out for all I care.

He glanced around him, at the slim winged forms, and thought of work and war, torment and triumph — yes, and now and then some laughter or a fragment of song — shared. He thought of high-hearted Trolwen, philosophic Tolk, earnest young Angrek, he thought of brave kindly Delp and his wife Rondonis, who was so much more a lady than many a human female he had known. And the small furry cubs which tumbled in the dust or climbed into his lap… No, he told himself, I’m wrong. It means a great deal to me, after all, that this war should be permanently ended.

The canoe slipped in between towering raft walls. Drak’ho faces looked stonily down on it. Now and then someone spat into its wake. They were all very quiet.

The unwieldy pile of the flagship loomed ahead. There were banners strung from the mastheads, and a guard in bright regalia formed a ring enclosing the main deck. Just before the wooden castle, sprawled on furs and cushions, Admiral T’heonax and his advisory council waited. To one side stood Captain Delp with a few personal guards, in war-harness still sweaty and unkempt.

Total silence lay over them as the canoe came to a halt and made fast to a bollard. Trolwen, Tolk, and most of the Lannacha troopers flew straight up to the deck. It was minutes later, after much pushing, panting, and swearing, that the humans topped that mountainous hull.

Van Rijn glowered about him. “What for hospitality!” he snorted in the Drak’ho language. “Not so much as one little rope let down to me, who is pushing my poor old tired bones to an early grave all for your sakes. Before Heaven, it is hard! It is hard! Sometimes I think I give up, me, and retire. Then where will the galaxy be? Then you will all be sorry, when it is too late.”

T’heonax gave him a sardonic stare. “You were not the best-behaved guest the Fleet has had, Eart’ho,” he answered. “I’ve a great deal to repay you. Yes. I have not forgotten.”

Van Rijn wheezed across the planks to Delp, extending his hand. “So our intelligences was right, and it was you doing all the works,” he blared. “I might have been sure. Nobody else in this Fleet has so much near a gram of brains. I, Nicholas van Rijn, compliment you with regards.”

T’heonax stiffened and his councilors, rigid in braid and sash, looked duly shocked at this ignoring of the admiral. Delp hung back for an instant. Then he took Van Rijn’s hand and squeezed it, quite in the Terrestrial manner.

“Lodestar help me, it is good to see your villanous fat face again,” he said. “Do you know how nearly you cost me my… everything? Were it not for my lady—”

“Business and friendship we do not mix,” said Van Rijn airily. “Ah, yes, good Vrouw Rodonis. How is she and all the little ones? Do they still remember old Uncle Nicholas and the bedtime stories he was telling them, like about the—”

“If you please,” said T’heonax in an elaborate voice, “we will, with your permission, carry on. Who shall interpret? Yes, I remember you now, Herald.” An ugly look. “Your attention, then. Tell your leader that this parley was arranged by my field commander, Delp hyr Orikan, without even sending a messenger down here to consult me. I would have opposed it had I known. It was neither prudent nor necessary. I shall have to have these decks scrubbed where barbarians have trod. However, since the Fleet is bound by its honor — you do have a word for honor in your language, don’t you? — I will hear what your leader has to say.”

Tolk nodded curtly and put it into Lannachamael. Trolwen sat up, eyes kindling. His guards growled, their hands tightened on their weapons. Delp shuffled his feet unhappily, and some of T’heonax’s captains looked away in an embarrassed fashion.

“Tell him,” said Trolwen after a moment, with bitter precision, “that we will let the Fleet depart from Achan at once. Of course, we shall want hostages.”

Tolk translated. T’heonax peeled lips back from teeth and laughed. “They sit here with their wretched handful of rafts and say this to us?” His courtiers tittered an echo.

But his councilors, who captained his flotillas, remained grave. It was Delp who stepped forward and said: “The admiral knows I have taken my share in this war. With these hands, wings, this tail, I have killed enemy males; with these teeth, I have drawn enemy blood. Nevertheless I say now, we’d better at least listen to them.”

“What?” T’heonax made round eyes. “I hope you are joking.”

Van Rijn rolled forth. “I got no time for fumblydiddles,” he boomed. “You hear me, and I put it in millicredit words so some two-year-old cub can explain it to you. Look out there!” His arm waved broadly at the sea. “We have rafts. Not so many, perhaps, but enough. You make terms with us, or we keep on fighting. Soon it is you who do not have enough rafts. So! Put that in your pipe and stick it!”

Wace nodded. Good. Good, indeed. Why had that Drak’ho vessel run from his own lubber-manned prize? It was willing enough to exchange long-range shots, or to grapple sailor against sailor in the air. It was not willing to risk being boarded, wrecked, or set ablaze by Lannach’s desperate devils.

Because it was a home, a fortress, and a livelihood — the only way to make a living that this culture knew. If you destroyed enough rafts, there would not be enough fish-catching or fish-storing capacity to keep the folk alive. It was as simple as that.

“We’ll sink you!” screamed T’heonax. He stood up, beating his wings, crest aquiver, tail held like an iron bar. “We’ll drown every last whelp of you!”

“Possible so,” said Van Rijn. “This is supposed to scare us? If we give up now, we are done for anyhow. So we take you along to hell with us, to shine our shoes and fetch us cool drinks, nie?”

Delp said, with trouble in his gaze: “We did not come to Achan for love of destruction, but because hunger drove us. It was you who denied us the right to take fish which you yourselves never caught. Oh, yes, we did take some of your land too, but the water we must have. We can not give that up.”

Van Rijn shrugged. “There are other seas. Maybe we let you haul a few more nets of fish before you go.”

A captain of the Fleet said slowly: “My lord Delp has voiced the crux of the matter. It hints at a solution. After all, the Sea of Achan has little or no value to you Lannach’honai. We did, of course, wish to garrison your coasts, and occupy certain islands which are sources of timber and flint and the like. And naturally, we wanted a port of our own in Sagna Bay, for emergencies and repairs. These are questions of defense and self-suffiency, not of immediate survival like the water. So perhaps—”

“No!” cried T’heonax.

It was almost a scream. It shocked them into silence. The admiral crouched panting for a moment, then snarled at Tolk: “Tell your leader… I, the final authority… I refuse. I say we can crush your joke of a navy with small loss to ourselves. We have no reason to yield anything to you. We may allow you to keep the uplands of Lannach. That is the greatest concession you can hope for.”

“Impossible!” spat the Herald. Then he rattled the translation off for Trolwen, who arched his back and bit the air.