3 x T

"Tomorrow," Marya said thoughtfully. Her dark eyes were hooded, far away. Greenberg suspected he bore a similarly abstracted expression. He had been in plenty of fights and skirmishes, but all of them out of the blue, leaving him no time for anything but reaction. Deliberately waiting for combat was, in a way, harder than taking part.

Because humans needed less room than G'Bur, the tents they set up were dwarfed by the locals' shelters. But their three stood out all the same, the orange nylon fiery bright when compared to the undyed, heavy fabric that was the standard tent-cloth on L'Rau.

Marya opened her tent flap. She hesitated before going through and looked from Greenberg to Koniev. Daylight was fading fast now, and campfires were not enough to let the master merchant be sure she flushed, not with her dark skin. Had it been Je

"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, Je

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 ba

And yet, the T'Kai owned an edge no soldiers on L'Rau had ever enjoyed. "They ca

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," Je

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," Je

"Maybe we shouldn't. Why didn't you say something about that sooner?"

Je

"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 pla

"I do," Je

The master merchant did not answer. Je