He turned to scowl at Ahmed’s small group paralleling his own a dozen meters away. It was a nuisance to have to screen out here on the steppe. To preserve his privacy and vanity, Draco had no psi on his immediate staff, relying entirely on his own powerful talent. But the non-psi Sudanese dog kept two of them with him everywhere but in harem, including that insolent eunuch, Yusuf the Turk.
Topping the low rise, he could see the sky chariot atop the next gentle hillock, shining brightly in the sun. Did they use slaves to polish it, he wondered, or did their arts keep it so? The last few score meters they rode warily, observing with care. A few meters from the sky chariot was a curved line of crushed grass and broken flowers, as if, for some reason, people within it had come out and trampled an exactly circular path around their craft.
The two groups of horsemen had almost come together now, converging on the pinnace. Ahmed was a length ahead when Draco, about to spur even, saw Ahmed’s stallion recoil, its powerful haunches bunched, and try to back away as if it had bumped into something. Draco reined to an abrupt stop and watched while Ahmed brought his now-rearing mount under control, using the spade-bit brutally.
Tentatively Draco moved his horse toward the pinnace with short steps. At the line in the grass it jerked its head and nearly squatted as it took a reflexive step backward. Then both men turned their nervous animals and sidled toward the craft, each with one hand outstretched. Something hard was there that they could not see, something unyielding that rose from the ring of flattened grass.
At that moment the sky chariot turned to glass before them, and Draco could see the people inside—five of them. Strange clothing covered them from foot to neck, fitting their limbs loosely. Surrounded by an invisible wall, they wore no body armor. And no swords; perhaps the small objects belted to their waists were weapons of some kind.
They were looking at him and his people.
Probably the invisible wall would allow weapons to be wielded outwardly by those inside, even though it apparently would let nothing penetrate from without.
But it did not block thoughts effectively. And they thought in Anglic; that was a stroke of luck! The Master had made his officers learn the language because it was widely used in Europe between people of different native tongues.
Abruptly a voice spoke, loud and clear, seeming somehow to come from a spar extending above the chariot. The tone was slightly metallic but clearly a woman’s. Her aura was not one you would find about a slave; among the ancients, as among some peoples on Earth, women must rank as men.
The audio pickup in the commast seemed to be working well, Matthew noted. It was directional, and right now was focused on two who appeared to be the leaders and who sat their horses side by side. Their breast plates were burnished silver instead of bronze, and their helmets more luxuriantly plumed. The shorter of the two replied to Nikko’s question.
“Yes, we speak Anglic, but it is not our native speech.”
“What is your native speech?” Nikko asked.
His answer meant nothing to her, but Anne Marie said softly, “Let me have the mike.” She spoke into it in an unfamiliar language, listened, then turned to the others. “Arabic,” she said, “or rather, a twenty-ninth century derivative. It’s not much like the computer extrapolations of what Arabic might have become. More like a pidgin Arabic, as if . . . ”
“What did he say?” Matthew interrupted with some irritation.
“It amounted to flattery and a formal welcome. They are honored to talk to the ancients, and something about helping us in any way they can. That’s the gist of it.”
Their scabbards were conspicuously empty. They’re bound to be impressed with the pinnace, Matthew told himself, and they probably have legends of laser weapons, nuclear bombs, the whole ancient armory, though God knows what transformations they may have undergone over centuries of oral tradition. It’s just as well they don’t know we don’t have such things today.