Despite the morning's excitement I tried going to bed at what Dean and the Dead Man perversely call a reasonable hour. My theory was that if I rolled out early,

my neighbors wouldn't be out to giggle and point at the spectacle of Garrett running laps. But that night the morCartha brought their flying carnival to my neighborhood. It sounded like the aerial battle of the century. Blood and broken bodies and war cries and taunts rained down. Whenever I threatened to drift off, they staged some absurd, cacophonous confrontation right outside my window.

I decided it was time somebody on the Hill suffered a stroke of smarts and enlisted them all as mercenaries and sent them down to the Cantard to look for Glory Mooncalled. Let him lose sleep while they squabbled over his head.

Old Glory probably wasn't getting much sleep, anyway. The Karentine powers that be had thrown everything into the cauldron down there They were grinding his upstart republic fine, inexorably and inevitably, permitting him no chance to catch his breath and turn his genius toward their despair.

The war between Karenta and Venageta has been going on since my grandfather's time It's become as much a part of life as the weather. Glory Mooncalled started out a mercenary captain in Venageti service, had a major falling out with the Venageti warlords, and came over to our side swearing mighty oaths of vengeance. Once he had smashed everybody who offended him, he suddenly declared the Cantard—possession of which is what the war is all about—an autonomous republic. All the Cantard's native nonhuman races supported him. So, for the moment, Karenta and Venageta have a common cause, the obliteration of Glory Mooncalled. Once he's gone, it'll be back to war as usual.