Already men in leather armor lined the wall. Others were heaping earth and stones to close the gap.

Vala could feel the Grass Giants staring at her beard.

She could count roughly a thousand of them, as many women as men. But women outnumbered the men among Grass Giants elsewhere, and she didn’t see any children. Add a few hundred more, then, for women tending children somewhere in the buildings.

A great alien silver shape strode down the slope to meet them.

It lifted its crested helm to reveal a golden mane. The Thurl was the biggest of Grass Giant males. The armor he wore bulged at every joint; he looked like no hominid Vala had ever seen.

“Thurl,” Kaywerbrimmis said carefully, “Farsight Trading has come to help.”

“Good. What are you, Machine People? We hear of you.”

“Our Empire is mighty, but we spread through trade, not war. We hope to persuade your people to make fuel for us, and bread, and other things. Your kind of grass can make good bread; you might like it yourselves. In return we can show you wonders. The least are our guns. These handguns, they’ll reach farther than your crossbows. For close work we have flamers—”

“Killing-things, are they? Our good luck that you have come. Yours, too, to reach cover. You should move your guns to the wall now.”

“Thurl, the big guns are mounted on the cruisers.”

The wall stood twice the height of a Machine Person. But Valavirgillin remembered a local word. “Ramp. Thurl, is there a ramp that leads up the wall? Will it carry our cruisers?”

The day’s colors were turning charcoal-gray. It was starting to rain. Far above these clouds, the shadow of night must have nearly covered the sun.