“Then what would you do?” groaned Wace.
“Let us first consider what will assuredly happen,” said Tolk. “We have lost our trains; if not captured, they will be fired presently. Thus our supplies are gone. Our forces have been split, the fliers driven off, we groundlings left here. Trolwen cannot fight his way back to us, being outnumbered. We at Mannenach do outnumber our immediate opponents by quite a bit. But we cannot face their artillery.
“Therefore, to continue the fight, we must throw away all our big shields and other new-gangled items, and revert to conventional air tactics. But this infantry is not well equipped for normal combat: we have few archers, for instance. Delp need only shelter on the rafts, behind his fire weapons, and for all our greater numbers we’ll be unable to touch him. Meanwhile he will have us pinned here, cut off from food and material. All the excess war goods your mill produced is valueless lying up in Salmenbrok. And there will certainly be strong reinforcements from the Fleet.”
“To hell with that!” shouted Wace. “We have the town, don’t we? We can hold it against them till they rot!”
“What can we eat while they are rotting?” said Tolk. “You are a good craftsman, Eart’a, but no student of war. The cold fact is, that Delp managed to split our forces, and therefore he has already won. I propose to cut our losses by retreating now, while we still can.”
And then suddenly his manner broke, and he stooped and covered his eyes with his wings. Wace saw that the Herald was growing old.
XIV
There was dancing on the decks, and jubilant chants rang across Sagna Bay to the enfolding hills. Up and down and around, in and out, the feet and the wings interwove till timbers trembled. High in the rigging, a piper skirled their melody; down below, a great overseer’ s drum which set the pace of the oars now thuttered their stamping rhythm. In a ring of wing-folded bodies, sweat-gleaming fur and eyes aglisten, a sailor whirled his female while a hundred deep voices roared the song:
“…A-sailing, a sailing, a-sailing to the Sea of Beer, fair lady, spread your sun-bright wings and sail with me!”
Delp walked out on the poop and looked down at his folk.
“There’ll be many a new soul in the Fleet, sixty ten-days hence,” he laughed.
Rodonis held his hand, tightly. “I wish—” she began.
“Yes?”
“Sometimes… oh, it’s nothing—” The dancing pair fluttered upward, and another couple sprang out to beat the deck in their place; planks groaned under one more huge ale barrel, rolled forth to celebrate victory. “Sometimes I wish we could be like them.”
“And live in the forecastle?” said Delp dryly.
“Well, no… of course not—”
“There’s a price on the apartment, and the servants, and the bright clothes and leisure,” said Delp. His eyes grew pale. “I’m about to pay some more of it.”
His tail stroked briefly over her back, then he beat wings and lifted into the air. A dozen armed males followed him. So did the eyes of Rodonis.
Under Mannenach’s battered walls the Drak’ho rafts lay crowded, the disorder of war not yet cleaned up in the haste to enjoy a hard-bought victory. Only the full-time warriors remained alert, though no one else would need much warning if there should be an attack. It was the boast of the forecastle that a Fleet sailor, drunk and with a female on his knee, could outfight any three foreigners sober.
Delp, flapping across calm waters under a high cloudless day-sky, found himself weighing the morale value of such a pride against the sharp practical fact that a Lannach’ho fought like ten devils. The Drak’honai had won this time.
A cluster of swift canoes floated aloof, the admiral’s standard drooping from one garlanded masthead. T’heonax had come at Delp’s urgent request, instead of making him go out to the main Fleet — which might mean that T’heonax was prepared to bury the old hatred. (Rodonis would tell her husband nothing of what had passed between them, and he did not urge her; but it was perfectly obvious she had forced the pardon from the heir in some way.) Far more likely, though, the new admiral had come to keep an eye on this untrusted captain, who had so upset things by turning the holding operation on which he had been contemptuously ordered, into a major victory. It was not unknown for a field commander with such prestige to hoist the rebel flag and try for the Admiralty.
Delp, who had no respect for T’heonax but positive reverence for the office, bitterly resented that imputation.
He landed on the outrigger as prescribed and waited until the Horn of Welcome was blown on board. It took longer than necessary. Swallowing anger, Delp flapped to the canoe and prostrated himself.
“Rise,” said T’heonax in an indifferent tone. “Congratulations on your success. Now, you wished to confer with me?” He patted down a yawn. “Please do.”
Delp looked around at the faces of officers, warriors, and crewfolk. “In private, with the admiral’s most trusted advisors, if it please him,” he said.
“Oh? Do you consider what you have to say is that important?” T’heonax nudged a young aristocrat beside him and winked.
Delp spread his wings, remembered where he was, and nodded. His neck was so stiff it hurt. “Yes, sir, I do,” he got out.
“Very well.” T’heonax walked leisurely toward his cabin.
It was large enough for four, but only the two of them entered, with the young court favorite, who lay down and closed his eyes in boredom. “Does not the admiral wish advice?” asked Delp.
T’heonax smiled. “So you don’t intend to give me advice yourself, captain?”
Delp counted mentally to twenty, unclenched his teeth, and said:
“As the admiral wishes. I’ve been thinking about our basic strategy, and the battle here has rather alarmed me—”
“I didn’t know you were frightened.”
“Admiral, I… never mind! Look here sir, the enemy came within two fishhooks of beating us. They had the town. We’ve captured weapons from them equal or superior to our own, including a few gadgets I’ve never seen or heard of… and in incredible quantities, considering how little time they had to manufacture the stuff. Then too, they had these abominable new tactics, ground fighting — not as an incidental, like when we board an enemy raft, but as the main part of their effort!
“The only reason they lost was insufficient co-ordination between ground and air, and insufficient flexibility. They should have been ready to toss away their shields and take to the air in fully equipped squadrons at an instant’s notice.
“And I don’t think they’ll neglect to remedy that fault, if we give them the chance.”
T’heonax buffed his nails on a sleek-furred arm and regarded them critically. “I don’t like defeatists,” he said.
“Admiral, I’ m just trying not to underestimate them. It’s pretty clear they got all these new ideas from the Eart’honai. What else do the Eart’honai know?”
“Hm-m-m. Yes.” T’heonax raised his head. A moment’s uneasiness flickered in his gaze. “True. What do you propose?”
“They’re off balance now,” said Delp with rising eagerness. “I’m sure the disappointment has demoralized them. And of course, they’ve lost all that heavy equipment. If we hit them hard, we can end the war. What we must do is inflict a decisive defeat on their entire army. Then they’ll have to give up, yield this country to us or die like insects when their birthing time comes.”
“Yes.” T’heonax smiled in a pleased way. “Like insects. Like dirty, filthy insects. We won’t let them emigrate, captain.”
“They deserve their chance,” protested Delp.
“That’s a question of high policy, captain, for me to decide.”