Darien sat astride her warbeast preening her whiskers as the barge rocked forward on the waves. Salt spray stung her nose and eyes as seabirds shrieked overhead. Darien shivered and the fur down her back rose up. To the other chiefs she denied being superstitious, but the bird cries always filled her with dread.

Before the rowers or the other war chiefs spied her fear-ruffed fur, Darien glared toward the green shapes gliding about the crown of the Isle of the Covenant and yowled out a challenge with fangs bared.

Her mate Chiga, braced next to her against the wave-driven movement, also glared across the water at the hump of black rock jutting above the waves. The shapeless forms thereon froze at her angry challenge, then gathered in a knot.

Darien showed them her fangs as she growled her displeasure. Chiga mewed and stroked her flank with his huge hand.

"Darling huntress, we're here to parley with those slimy toads, not to do battle. The Verities of the Ancients require we offer parley to settle the dispute before blood be shed. The forms must be followed, eh?"

He stroked her fur down as he stretched his muzzle toward hers. Darien met his nose with her own, then rubbed his cheek with hers. His rumbling purr set the other chiefs and warriors laughing.

She scratched behind Chiga's ear and he sighed with pleasure, eyes half-closed. "Yes darling protector, the forms will be followed. And who knows? Perhaps the water-breathers will find wisdom and abandon their foolish incursions onto our lands."

She glanced back to the drummers nestled at the stern. "And if not, we'll instruct them on their folly." She gestured and the drummers began pounding a war beat. The thundering rhythm set her heart racing as the barge shook with the concussions. Across the water, the Malar'a chiefs raised their web-fingered fists in answer.

Darien just sat up and chuckled. They think we're ignorant savages because we haul a Brunic warbeast to an island barely big enough for the two parties to stand upon, and beat our drums as if they didn't know we come. She glanced at the dark shapes cutting through the shallow water beside them. We'd have to be blind not to see them shadowing us.

Well, we'll teach them. A Brunic warchief doesn't attend a parley without her soul mate. She stroked the warbeast's shoulder so it grunted with pleasure. And drums are more than noisemakers.

~*~

Darien cantered the warbeast to within a spear-length of the green cloaked Malar'a. One stepped forward, prompting the warbeast to bare its fangs and hiss. Darien gentled her mount with whispered words and a pat on its neck. Behind, her party strode up, war chiefs in the lead and shaggy-maned warriors towering behind them. She slid off her mount and handed the reins to her sister Hierru, Chief of the Red Dawn tribe. Hands raised, Darien stepped forward.

Overhead, black storm clouds roiled across the sky, blotting out the sun as shifting winds hissed across the sea. Rumbles of thunder rolled across the little island so both Brunic and Malar'a stared into the sky, trying to gauge how soon the storm would come. Too soon for us to finish, Darien decided and turned back to the Malar'a.

"I am Darien Sunfang, Chief of the Morning Star tribe and speaker for the Brunic people. Who speaks for the Malar'a?"

A short figure, heavily cloaked in long green strips of seaweed, nodded. Darien scowled at the figure. Only once while still a kit had she seen a Malar'a uncloaked on land. Its mottled green skin was blistered from exposure to sun and air, yet it made no effort to return to the sea. She realized he was condemned to a slow death when she had spotted other Malar'a prowling the water just beyond the waves-watching.

The Malar'a speaker raised webbed hands and shuffled forward. "I am Ine'taie, speaker for the people of the sea." Its speech was slurred and echoed from within itself, colored by its resonant throat pouch.

Darien's mother once told her that underwater the Malar'a spoke with whistles and clicks spoken deep in their throats. Talking with an open mouth was a Malar'a euphemism for someone who lacked intelligence.

Darien gestured to the treaty stone standing between them, a black lump of volcanic rock where the two peoples had come to confer on disputes from time beyond living memory. "Your people and mine are in conflict, Ine'taie. We come to offer parley, to seek justice for the Brunic tribes. The Malar'a invade our lands, build stinking racks covered with dead fish in pastures we have long cherished."

The clouds overhead flashed with lightning deep within as fat drops of rain splattered down.

The Malar'a huffed and shifted so the long green strands of its cloak shook. "Invade? We use open land to dry our catch. Your people do not live on the land. Indeed, the Brunic tribes visit there only during the dry season. The land above the sea is endless, surely wide enough for your people to find another pasture? The land we use is open and close to the water, well suited to our needs. Only an arrogant beast would deny us this use."

The rain grew from scattered drops to sheets driven by the wind.

Already discomforted by the cold wind and soaking rain, Darien's fur ruffled at the insult and she bared her fangs. "So we are arrogant beasts, eh? Or perhaps rootless savages as your folk are fond of saying, or even open-mouthed speakers to use your idiom." She glared with teeth bared. "The pasture is sacred to my people. The wandering tribes of the Brunic have gathered there at the Summer solstice for lawmaking, trade, and celebrations from before my mother's time. Only an ignorant toad would fail to know that."

Lightning flashed down across the water as thunder shook the isle.

The Malar'a grunted and whistled to its fellows as its webbed hand clutched at Darien. It grunted to her, "The nattering of wandering savages are of no interest to the Malar'a. Were this not the Isle of the Covenant, I would take payment for your insult. Perhaps I should and be done with you." It shook its balled fists at her.

Lightning crashed around them as a shaft of light speared down from the clouds, piercing the treaty stone between Darien and the Malar'a. Light flashed and the ground shook. The Malar'a jerked away and stumbled to the ground. Darien crouched, eyes half-lidded as she stared at the fading light. At first she thought she saw a phantom afterimage of the glare hovering above the treaty rock, but it remained as her vision cleared.

The rain-soaked fur down her back rose again as she struggled to make sense of what her eyes beheld. A shaft of darkness rose up from the stone, narrow as her three fingers and half a body length long. A shape resolved as Darien stared, a hilt twisting like a spiral shell, a blade with a saw-toothed edge. Yet she could not see more of the thing no matter how close she looked. The sword was a space occupied by an absence of light, blackness like the void between the stars on a moonless night.

Is this a bad jest by the toads? Scare the savages with loud noises and ghostly swords? Darien growled and leapt, snatching the sword out of its sheath of stone before the Malar'a could react. The treaty rock crackled red-hot where the sword had pierced it, hissing steam in the rain. Darien turned with the sword raised high.

"You dare?" she growled as she stalked to where the Malar'a speaker was stumbling to its feet. Red rage pulsed through her, driving her beyond rationality. "You dare to come to a parley with a weapon hidden on the Isle? What was your plan, toad? To cut me down with your hidden sword while your brethren attacked my unarmed kin? Well, you've failed."

The Malar'a whistled and clicked as it waved its hands at her. "No, wait!"

She swung the sword down and it whispered through the Malar'a as if it were smoke. It dropped as its head rolled away, the green fronds flapping away in the wind to reveal green mottled skin splashed with dark red blood. Others in the Malar'a party shambled forward, but Darien whipped the blade in an arc, slicing through the foremost, red blood spraying behind the blade. The sword felt like a fragile reed in her hand, light and supple, but it sliced through flesh and bone with the barest resistance. A line of Molar'a's dropped writhing as the rest shambled down the far side of the Isle into the sea whistling and clicking, drowning out the wind and thunder with their outraged shouts.

She turned to find Chiga standing at her shoulder. "Dearest, what have you done? You've shed the blood of our enemy during parley. On the Isle of the Covenant itself."

"Darling protector, I had no choice. The toads planned an ambush. Look at the sword they concealed in the Treaty Rock itself. No doubt the toad intended to summon it to strike me down as we stood over the rock debating. But something went amiss and the sword emerged before the Malar'a was ready."

Chiga rumbled his doubt deep in his throat, whiskers and ears back. "How can you be sure it was the toads' doing?"

She held the sword up before her. "Look at it! No Brunic smith forged this. I've never seen or heard of its like, nor is there mention of such a weapon in the Verities. The toads must have created it in secret, to use against us in surprise." The giant warrior leaned closely, staring and smelling the blade, before nodding as he growled.

"It must be as you say," he shouted. He turned to the others. "Brothers and sisters, we've been betrayed by the toads. I don't know what they intended, but it's clear they meant treachery of the foulest sort. We must flee to land, before they can regroup. To the barge, before they can scuttle it and trap us on this rock."

Darien grabbed Chiga's arm before he darted away. "We need the toads' bodies. I planned for this. Hurry!"

They pushed off the isle with the drummers thundering out a war chant as Chiga and the others hacked at the Malar'a's bodies. They dribbled the dark blood, collected in leather cups, into the water, setting off a wild thrashing in their wake. Long spearhead shapes cut through the water, schools of hunter fish each as long as Darien. These were the mindless predators of the sea, well know to Brunic and Malar'a alike, drawn by loud noises and driven to madness by the taste of blood in the water. At Darien's sign, the warriors hacked off fist sized chunks from the corpses and hurled them before the barge. Spearhead shapes flashed through the water wherever bloody meat fell. And then there was a Malar'a's form thrashing on the surface as the predators flew by.

It sank listless as a dark cloud of blood blossomed. Other Malar'a rose ahead thrashing, then sinking as the war drums thundered. Soon their route was a seething mass of the sea predators. No Malar'a will try to stop us.

Astride her warbeast, Darien stared through the driving rain at the black sword as it pulsed in time with her own simmering rage.

~*~