On either side of the gorge in the river, small boats rowed carefully to the edge of the water. The sailors within leaned out as far as they could and gauged the distance across the furrow. They shook their heads in exasperation. The vodyanoi jeered and cheered.

The channel had been dug a little to the south of Barley Bridge, at the very edge of the docklands. There were ships waiting to enter and ships waiting to leave. A mile or so downstream, in the insalubrious waters between Badside and Dog Fenn, merchant ships reined in their nervous seawyrms and let the boilers run low. In the other direction, by the jetties and landing bays, in Kelltree’s fat canals beside the drydocks, the captains of vessels from as far as Khadoh gazed impatiently at the vodyanoi pickets that thronged the banks and worried about getting home.

By mid-morning the human wharfmen had arrived to get about the task of unloading and loading. They quickly discovered that their presence was more or less superfluous. Once the remaining work was done preparing those ships still at anchor in Kelltree itself—at most another two days’ work—they were stuck.

The small group who had been in discussion with the striking vodyanoi had come prepared. At ten in the morning about twenty men suddenly streamed out of their yards, climbing the fences around the docks, and jogging to the waterfront by the vodyanoi pickets, who cheered them on with something like hysteria. The men pulled out their own signs: HUMAN AND VODYANOI AGAINST THE BOSSES!

They joined in the noisy chanting.

Over the next two hours, the mood hardened. A core of humans set up a counter-demonstration inside the dockland’s low walls. They screamed abuse at the vodyanoi, calling them frogs and toads. They jeered at the striking humans, denounced them as race-traitors. They warned that the vodyanoi would ruin the dock, making human wages plummet. One or two of them carried Three Quills literature.

Between them and the equally strident human strikers was a great mass of confused, vacillating dockers. They wandered back and forth, swearing and baffled. They listened to the shouted arguments from both sides.

The numbers began to grow.

On either bank of the river, in Kelltree itself and on the south bank of Syriac Well, crowds were gathering to watch the confrontation. A few men and women ran among them, moving too fast to be identified, handing out leaflets with the Runagate Rampant banner at the top. They demanded in closely printed text that the human dockers join the vodyanoi, that it was the only way the demands would be won. The papers could be seen circulating among the human dockers, handed out by person or persons unseen.