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guarded. We in Vallia had developed flying ships which could rise in the air and grip onto etheric-magnetic lines of force and so sail the skies, tacking and making boards against the wind. It had not seemed Hamal with her sky-spanning fleets of enormous ships would need to descend to mere vessels powered by wind and sails. But, clearly, they had. As the ships of the Train of Supply furled their sails and made bumpy landings, I saw only one true voller, swinging high as tail guard.
    Also, I observed that the Hamalese made unhandy sailors.
    “They have come to take our produce from us.” Nulty was grumpy, bowing under the inevitability of taxation. “Vultures.”
    “The empire needs supplies, Nulty.”
    “Oh, yes. We must needs feed and clothe our armies and provender their animals. But we have to defend ourselves against the wild men from the Mountains of the West. And our soldiers are away in the Dawn Lands, or Vallia.” He cocked an eye up at me. “They say your namesake there, Dray Prescot, who is the Emperor of Vallia, is a devil spawned from hell and should be stuffed and roasted to a cinder.”
    “So they say.”
    Then Nulty surprised me. We walked slowly in the suns light toward the grounded sailing ships of the sky. Nulty said: “Now if the Dray Prescot who is Hamun ham Farthytu could be the Dray Prescot who is Emperor of Vallia, I think he would run things very differently, very differently, by Havil the Green!”
    I digested this. If you understand that I felt very small you will not be far from the truth. Difficult to feel ashamed, though, damned difficult, when I was just a simple ordinary sailor man trying to run an empire and chuck out the slavers and the aragorn and the thieving flutsmen and reiving mercenaries, and then trying to join all the lands of Paz into a friendship that was genuine and would last, so that we might together turn our attention to the Opaz-forsaken Shanks who raided us all with fire and blood and misery. Damned difficult.
    “Well, Nulty, old friend. I’m just the Amak of Paline Valley here, and have work to do in Ruathytu.”
    The officers in charge of the supply position were barely polite. I saw they were annoyed at being forced to fly sailing ships of the air, which the Hamalese called famblehoys, instead of queening it through the upper levels aboard vollers. We in Vallia sometimes called our flying sailing ships vorlcas, and as you will see, the two names reflect the respective worth in which the countries held their sky sailers. No doubts at all afflicted me that I must take a very careful look at these aerial vessels. The officers bore down, and although second line troops, the uniforms blazed bullion and lace and flaunted feathers. Nulty pulled a face, and then we were busy trying to keep as much of our produce as we could for ourselves.
    Eventually I could leave Nulty and the elders to handle this end of affairs — they’d been doing it and would continue to do it while I was away — and could saunter over to the famblehoys. The aerial ships were large, bulky, deep-keeled, cobbled together and ugly, deuced ugly. The pattern from which they had been copied, it was plain, had come from Vallia.
    Good sound timber had been used in their construction, and iron, plenty of iron to act as knees and brackets and generally to hold things together. The masts were solid, somewhat on the short side, and the yards were mere stumps when compared with those gracing galleons or vorlcas of Vallia. This fitted with the Hamalese ideas of seamanship.
    Putting on my inane face I puttered around, studying the ships, and drew a number of amused or contemptuous looks from the voswods on the decks, who, being aerial soldiers, would not sully their hands with shipwork or lading. There were precious few soldiers for a convoy of this size, some fifty famblehoys. The produce the fleet could fit into the holds would be enormous. In the name of the Invisible Twins! Where was it going? West against