“I hope so. He’s had a better grip on himself lately—the last few days.”
Ivan continued to look at him, his eyes sober. Mikhail reached for the radio switch. “Wish me luck.”
XXXI
There were nineteen people in the narrow conference room, with Matthew and Ram at one end of the table. Ram had said little, and Matthew presided in his usual style, loosely.
Carlos Lao was enjoying the adversary role. “Use a little vision, Nikko. They have a whole city open to them. Other tribes, in Earth’s old history, became civilized in a single generation when they moved into a conquered city and began living there.”
“Come on now, Carl,” said Alex Malaluan, “you don’t seriously think it was the buildings and streets of Rome that civilized the conquering Visigoths, do you? It was the Romans themselves.”
“What makes you think the fifth-century Romans were any more civilized than the Visigoths who conquered them?” Nikko asked.
Alex persisted. “And the Northmen would be moving into an empty city. What sort of skills and manpower would it take to keep it operating? To keep water flowing in the ducts? Keep sewers repaired and functioning, provide labor and the transportation of goods? Warriors and hunters and herdsmen don’t know how to do those things, and they’re probably not inclined to learn. Slaves were the engineers and accountants and laborers, and almost all of them are dead. When they died, the city died; those buildings are the bones.”
Carlos sighed noisily. “All right, I was wrong. And anyway,” he added, smirking at Nikko, “the Northmen would have to be flexible, willing to change, even if the slaves were still available.”
“And?”
“And according to you, they have their poet laureate writing an epic hymn celebrating the victory of the Northmen and their way of life over the corrupt orcs.”
“They are willing to change though,” Nikko corrected. “They have changed, and are changing. Fifteen months ago they were forest dwellers in Scandinavia who rode horses rather little and not very skillfully. They didn’t even have a word for prairie or steppe—didn’t even know there was such a thing. They’ve settled for calling it storang, great meadow. They were an assortment of clans and tribes raiding and feuding with one another. Now they’re united—even refer to themselves collectively as the People—and in less than a year’s time they turned themselves into first-rate cavalry.
“But in a sense you’re right. They do resist change in what they consider cultural basics. They still believe that life as herdsmen and farmers, hunters and warriors, is best for personal and cultural health and vigor. Their changes amount to adjusting their old life-ways to new circumstances and a new physical environment, without changing their principles.
“I’m not sure how smooth and easy it will be for them. They’re getting ready now to explore the foothills and mountains all around the prairie, all the way around to northern Bulgaria. They’re a people used to lots of room, who’ve been crowded together for months. They’ll need to decide on new clan and tribal territories.
“And a tougher job will be to decide on whether and how to change the laws governing feuds and wars among themselves. A lot of them feel they shouldn’t raid each other like they used to. They feel a lot closer to each other since they first met the orcs, and lots of them feel there are plenty of outsiders they can fight. But others feel that outsiders are too easy, that real warrior merit can be earned only by fighting worthy opponents—namely other Northmen. They’d fight outsiders only from necessity.
“And of course there’s the likelihood that if they fight other people too much, the others will pick up Northman tactics and methods of training and so forth and become a lot more dangerous.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “That last bit of reasoning sounds pretty sophisticated,” he said. “Are you sure you didn’t think of it yourself? It doesn’t strike me as a product of the barbarian mind.”
“No, I heard it down there, although I have to admit it was Nils who mentioned it. But there were primitives long ago who were fairly sophisticated in some respects, and we also need to keep in mind that these people may have carried down certain concepts and attitudes from the civilized past.