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"Good-humored guy," Callaslough ventured.
"I'm sure he'd laugh just as hard if his warriors were playing soccer with our heads."
"I am Whitefang," he barked at Valentine in the Grog trade tongue. He stamped on the old steps, hard, and Valentine heard a commotion from the upstairs.
"O Whitefang, this foot-passed stranger begs the powers of your ears and eyes and tongue."
Whitefang waved them over with a two-handed gesture that made it look like he was taking an appreciative whiff of his own flatulence.
"He didn't just cut one, did he?" Callaslough said.
"Try and look agreeable, no matter what," Valentine said as he stepped forward.
The chief bobbed and one of his subchiefs put a pillow-topped milking stool under his hindquarters, but he didn't sit until Valentine and Callaslough were both off their feet.
It took a while for the negotiations to commence. The subchiefs and elders and warriors had to arrange themselves in a semicircle around the visitors, bearing their best captured weapons, flak jackets, and helmets. The most battle scarred of all of them, both with inten-tional artistry and in random wound, held a massive surgical-tubing slingshot and two bandoliers of captured hand grenades.
Whitefang's dozen or so wives stood behind him, the two most heavily pregnant in front of the others, turning now and then to display swollen bellies as proof of the chiefs potency.
Others gripped their children by the ears to show them how their father conducted himself with strangers.
A splendid-looking teen female, almost attractive in her careless lounge, wore the white headband of an unmarried daughter as she rested against Whitfang's scarred shoulder. By the woolliness of her thighs, Valentine guessed her to be Whitefang's eldest daughter. She wore a long, modest skirt made out of old Disney bedsheets, but she managed to hike it up a little in the direction of the unblooded warriors.
Valentine heard splashes and slurps behind as the Grogs drank the root beer. A young warrior made for the tub, but his fellows held him back, grumbling and grunting.
"What do the strangers beg of Whitefang?" Whitefang asked. Valentine couldn't tell what had changed in the assembly that caused him to commence negotiations.
"Battle alliance," Valentine said.
The audience gasped or hooted.
"Battle alliance. With humans?" the veteran with the artistic battle scarring asked.
Whitefang laughed. His daughter rolled her eyes.
"Battle alliance is for against humans," a white-eyebrowed old male said.
"They insult," a younger warrior shouted from the crowd to the side. At least that's what Valentine thought he said. The youth's trade tongue was clumsy, either from emotion or lack of practice.
"Want battle!" another youth said.
Others shouted in their own tongue. Valentine thought he recognized the word for blood.
"Kill us and you will have battle with humans," Valentine said.
Whitefang laughed, finding the prospect of war as funny as the taste of root beer.
"Fuck you up," Whitefang said. In pretty fair English.
If the Whitefangs killed them, at least it would be over quick. Warrior enemies would be dispatched quickly and cleanly. The Grogs reserved torture for criminals.
"Means bad old times," Valentine said. "Come soldiers. Come artillery. Come armored car."
"Let armored car come," Whitefang laughed. He barked at his harem, and they disappeared into the basement of the chief's house. They reemerged bearing steering wheels and machine-gun turret rings, executing neat pirouettes in front of Valentine and Callaslough.
Callaslough was breathing fast, like a bull working up a charge. "Bas-"
"Easy," Valentine said.
