Renegade of Callisto

“Two of them,” Borak corrected him solemnly.

Very shortly thereafter we took our departure. The former captives climbed aboard the Shondakor and the little scoutcraft, the Lankar-jan, and we took to the air after taking our farewells of Koja and his mate, and of Borak, high chief of the Haroob Clan.

These farewells were brief and cursory, partly because saying good-bye has always distressed me, and partly because they were only temporary farewells anyway. For someday soon, I knew, Koja would ride up before the gates of Shondakor the Golden amidst a mighty retinue of his nobles and warriors, for a visit of state.

We had already discussed a treaty of eternal peace between the Clans of the Yathoon Horde and the Three Cities; if the Yathoon warriors would restrain themselves from raiding the farms and merchant caravans and outlying provinces of Shondakor and Tharkol and Soraba, our fleets and legions would cease attacking them on sight. And we would open avenues of peaceful trade, giving them foodstuffs and weapons and tools and gewgaws in return for the valuable minerals wherewith the Black Mountains were laden.

This concordat, perhaps Utopian, was certainly for the future. But more to be anticipated in the near future was the arrival of Koja and his mate to Shondakor, to introduce to us their firstborn. This he had promised me, and so had Nourya.

And that happy day would perhaps not be too far off, for already―they informed me modestly―Nourya was carrying the eggs she would soon lay. And the gestation period of the Yathoon female is brief, while the larval stage is not much longer.

I wondered if it would be deemed advisable by Koja and his mate to permit Darloona and me the privilege of raising and educating their offspring, at least in part? Koja himself had learned the value and richness of civilization and its arts and gentler ways by living among us: how better to humanize the next generation of the Yathoon and to inculcate the principles of love and friendship and chivalry in their cold hearts than by raising them among humankind?

As for these things, well, we would have to wait and see. The future and its dreams and plans are what make life exciting, and also worth living.

With these thoughts in mind, we flew home under the golden skies.