Matthew lifted and they quickly climbed out of sight to six kilometers, watching the viewscreen.
“Total savages,” Chandra said. “I can hardly believe there are actually human beings like that.”
“Also totally efficient,” Mikhail replied drily, “and we’d better believe it.” He turned to Matthew. “What was it old Gus Fong said? We’d bring back stories that would change the world.”
“Something like that.” Matthew read the polar azimuth of the barbarians’ course and moved ahead of them in that direction far above their view. Forest-dark mountains drew near, moved beneath, and pinnace Alpha slowed to a near hover. His deliberate hands manipulated and the landscape below slid smoothly across the viewscreen, magnification low as he transected the terrain. Within three minutes he found what he sought, a long grassy valley between forested ridges, with clusters of rude huts strung out for several kilometers. He dropped slowly, zooming the pickup for close examinations, retracting it for perspective.
The people’s identity seemed unquestionable. Like the warriors, many were light-haired, though most were not so strongly built. Women carried water and wood. Children helped or followed them or played and wrestled. Men and youths tended cattle from horseback, speared fish in the stream or swam in its pools. Others shot at marks, and many, on foot and on horseback, trained with swords.
Matthew read their position to the servo-mech, then instructed it to locate the homing beam and return to the Phaeacia. As they started their rendezvous trajectory he sat back pensively.
“What are you thinking about?” Chandra asked him.
Matthew tugged thoughtfully at his chin. “The barbarians. They look temporary, like a people in migration. No garden patches, nothing permanent looking . . . I wonder if they know what they’re getting into?”
“I see what you mean,” Mikhail said. “They’re badly outnumbered and outclassed, regardless of how tough they might be.”
“Right. I’d say the fight we saw was something like attacking a dire bear with a stick; you might get in the first blow or two, but then good night! If I was one of those people down there I’d load my family and gear on my horses and start putting distance between me and that city.”
V
Fanns allri nannan som Ynglingen hanmilt som mjök (onar leene), stark som storm (men allri raste), vis som jodens sälva annen.
Å varelse var han, aj dykt.
[There was never other like the Youngling, mild as milk (his eyes smiling), strong as storm (but never raging), wise as the spirit of the earth.
And living man he was, not myth.]
Prefatory verse of THE JÄRNHANN SAGA,
Kumalo translation
The long low ridge extended eastward from the foothills a considerable distance into the open plain. Its cool north-facing slope was green with new grass. At intervals, shallow draws ran down it, thick with low shrubby oaks whose soft, late-emerging leaflets tinted their gray with pink. Along the crest, broken rock let rain and melting snow penetrate deeply, and a ragged line of scraggly shrubs grew there, overlooking a semi-barren south slope.
The sky was cloudless and immense, the sun warm. Gnats hung in the air, celebrating the absence of wind, and an eagle soared, tilting and swaying in the updrafts. A mouse scurried between two spiny shrubs and a sparrow hawk darted toward it, rising again with the furry victim in its small talons.
The two adolescents, prone within the screen of shrubs, watched the brief tiny drama with sharp eyes, then looked southward across the plain again. Sweat oiled their dirty foreheads. Gnats hovered and bit unheeded. After several minutes the younger said softly, “There is something else I like about this country; you can see so far.”
The other nodded curtly, and for a time they said nothing, did nothing except scan the plain.
“Look,” the younger spoke again, and pointed southward.
“Jaha. Men on horseback; it looks like three.”
They watched awhile. “There is one trotting ahead on foot,” the older added. “About a hundred meters ahead.”
The other squinted. “I see him. It looks as if they plan to cross the ridge over east, where it isn’t so steep.”
They crawled back from the crest, then ran downslope to their horses tethered to a clump of oak shrubs. Untying them, they scrambled to their backs and started eastward at a gallop. A kilometer farther they angled up the slope and tied their horses again, then ran toward the crest, wriggling the last few meters on their bellies to lie panting among some shrubs.