“I’ll tell you frankly, Ram, I doubt if five dozen orcs on foot will get out of the country alive, and they’ll be the real survivor type.”
They went into the narrow conference room and sat around one end of the hardwood table.
“What about the main orc army, that we caught at the river?” Ram asked thoughtfully.
“Most of the survivors must be back in the City by now. We spotted a couple of mounted bands ourselves, riding toward the City from the north. Sten says his people took more than a thousand scalps, and estimates several hundred other orcs must have died in the river, shot from the air or by archers or had their horses killed from under them. With mail shirts on, most that got unhorsed must have drowned; some probably managed to shuck out of them.
“We saw some survivors in the delta country today, too. It looked as if they’d taken over a couple of villages there—as if they weren’t even trying to get back to the City. I mentioned it to Sten, thinking he might say something about going to chase them out, but he didn’t; I guess to the Northmen the delta fishermen don’t mean much.”
Ram’s eyes were withdrawn. “What do the Northmen plan to do about the City?” he asked.
“I asked him about that. He said they won’t attack it in force or besiege it, but they’re rounding up the rest of the orc cattle. They also intend to burn the wheat fields when the grain is ripe; he believes they can starve the orcs out. And from a couple of things he said, some raid leaders will probably try to make names for themselves by raiding into the City at night, independently.”
“Do you still like the Northmen?”
She did not hesitate. “Yes I do, Ram. They’re friendly honest people, even if they are bloodthirsty and ruthless toward their enemies. I know you’re feeling a kind of sympathy for the orcs, but compare the way they treated their hostages with how the Northmen treated me. And consider what the orcs would have done if they’d broken the Northman army.”
Ram shook his head without irritation. “It’s not a matter of feeling sorry for the orcs,” he said quietly. “But each orc is a human being, with one life that’s his, and with feelings. And there’s the matter of feeling joy in killing, like the Northmen obviously do; that’s something I find depraved. From the skimpy picture I’ve got, partly from you and Charles but partly from Ilse too, an important part of their culture is a set of rules that allows them to enjoy killing their fellow Northmen without destroying their society or suffering from guilt.”
“Making a game out of war was an improvement,” Nikko answered mildly. “According to tradition, they used to fight each other really ferociously and ruthlessly, tribe against tribe and clan against clan, and really threatened to destroy themselves. Making it a game was progress, not degeneracy.”
“They didn’t go far enough,” Ram said dryly. “They should have written off war altogether. And that’s no game they’re playing with the orcs.” He stopped Nikko’s response with a gesture. “Okay, I admit that last wasn’t fair; it’d be suicide to play games with the orcs. Did they say when they’ll be done with Alpha?”
“Sten talked to the chiefs about that. They say we can have it back when they’ve taken the city.”
“Taken the city! Good Lord! That could be months from now!”
Nikko shrugged silently.
“And no assurance we’ll get it back then.”
“I think we have some assurance,” Willi put in. “They’ve been pretty honest with us so far. Slippery maybe, but they’ve kept their word. They gave us back all their hostages when you gave them most of our munitions.”
Ram grunted, then turning to Nikko he changed the subject. “Do you have all your tapes transferred to the computer?”
“All but today’s.”
“Good. Matt wants a full session sometime soon, and a full team review of everything that’s happened. I want you to start working with Monica tomorrow on a subject retrieval program.”
“If I’m doing that, then who’ll be in charge of the landing team?”