“Even if I hadn’t been there before, enemies might have come before me,” Gar explained.
Alea felt a twinge of alarm. “Have you so many enemies, then?”
“Anyone who tries to free slaves and raise up the downtrodden makes enemies,” Magnus answered. He sat down in a chair near hers and pointed at the huge window in front of them. “That isn’t really a picture.”
Alea looked at it. It showed a huge blue and green ball with swirls of white covering most of its surface. “What is it, then?”
“A view of your world, as seen by a sort of magical eye Herkimer left high above us,” Magnus said.
Alea stared, completely astounded. Magnus waited.
Finally Alea asked, “Is it a ball, then? The Midgarders teach their children that the world is a plate, and the sky is a bowl turned upside-down over it!”
“No, it’s a ball,” Magnus said. “I don’t think that’s a deliberate lie. Let’s call the picture by a magician’s word, though, ‘electronic’ instead of ‘magical.’ We can look at any part of the three nations with it. We can also listen to their radio messages. Herkimer, may we hear the Midgarders?”
Voices cascaded from the screen, sounding tinny and distant. “The giants have formed a wedge! They’re smashing through our army as though we were made of paper! In the name of Wotan, send whatever help you can!”
“I apologize for the quality of the sound,” Herkimer said; then with a note of disdain, “Their equipment is inferior.”
“Forget the quality!” Alea sat galvanized. “Can we see what they’re talking about?”
“Of course.” The picture of the world went cloudy, then cleared to show a view that made no sense.
“What’s that?” Alea cried.
“We’re looking down on them,” Gar explained, “as though we were one of Wotan’s ravens, flying overhead.”
The whole picture made sense then. She was seeing a town, and the roadway that led to it. Hundreds of Midgarder warriors stood blocking the road, but the giants had simply swerved around them, and the warriors were running to intercept them. Their swords and battleaxes only bounced off the giants’ legs, though, and they kicked the smaller men aside without even breaking stride.
“They seem to be wearing chainmail leggins,” Gar noted. Alea stared. “They have never done that before!”
“They have never really raided before,” Gar explained, “only fought off the Midgarders’ raids. Now and then they may have smashed through to free some prisoners, but I don’t think the Midgarders were able to take many giants home with them.”
“No.” Alea’s face hardened. “They killed them where they lay.”
“Is this what is happening now, Herkimer?” Gar asked. “No, Magnus,” the voice said. “I showed you the recent past, so you would understand the radio messages.”
The radio voices were still squawking at one another in alarm and dismay. The picture seemed to jump, then showed two giants smashing in the side of a slave barracks. The slaves came running out, and the two giants herded them off to the road, where other giants were driving in their own packs of slaves. They assembled all the village owned in a matter of minutes, then turned and strode back the way they had come, the slaves running to keep up, afraid of being stepped on by the giants behind them.
“They’re stealing slaves!” Alea cried.
“Of course,” Gar said. “Didn’t your childhood stories tell you that those greedy giants are always trying to steal everything you own?”
“But that’s all they’re stealing! Just slaves!”
“Well, after all,” Gar said, “from what you’ve told me, most of the slaves don’t dare try to escape. They’re sure they’ll be caught, and the punishments are harrowing—and very public.”
The Midgarders formed up across the road and to the sides, but they were only two ranks deep, and the giants simply smashed through them, kicking and laying about them with clubs. One Midgarder hurled a spear that stuck in a giant’s chest; she stumbled, but her fellows to either side caught her arms and helped her to keep striding.
“Body armor,” Gar explained.
The giants were past the Midgarders and striding away, too fast for the army to catch up. The slaves began to stumble and fall, so giants caught up half a dozen each and carried them away.
“They stole all our slaves!” the radio yammered. “Who’s going to grow our food now? Who’s going to tend the cattle and cook and clean?”
“We’ll send you enough slaves to get you by,” another voice snapped. “There are always more being born, you’ll replace them soon enough. Warriors are another matter. How many of you died?”
“Only six, praise Thor! But we have fifty wounded.”
“How many giants?”
“None dead.” The voice sounded sheepish. “We might have wounded three or four.”
“None dead? If this catches on, they’ll wipe us out! Tell us everything about the battle! We have to figure out a way to stop them!”
The voice began an account of the raid in hesitant tones. Alea cried, “They could have done this all along! They never had to lose a single giant!”
“No,” Gar agreed. “As long as the Midgarders were doing the raiding, they could choose the place and be ready for the enemy, so they could throw spears down from ambush, and giants did die. But the giants were only worrying about protecting their own villages. When the giants do the raiding, they choose the time and place, and nothing can stop them.”
“Then they could have been safe for hundreds of years, simply by raiding Midgard so often that we couldn’t recover enough to attack them!”
“That’s not the giants’ way,” Gar told her. “You know that as well as I.”
“Yes, I do.” Alea stared at the picture, her opinion of her own people sinking even further, and her opinion of the giants rising.
“Let’s hear AM,” Gar said. “What are the giants and dwarves talking about?”
The tinny voices shifted pitch and timbre to those of the dwarves. “Three wheels out first! Hold the tunnel while we gather the slaves!”
“Can you center on them?” Gar asked.
“Playing back,” Herkimer said.
“How can he show us what happened in the past?” Alea protested.
“It’s like memory,” Gar told her, “electronic memory.” The picture jumped, and she saw the earth erupting in the center of a farmyard. It formed a hole four feet across, and armored dwarves poured out of it to take up station around the edges. Taller dwarves, as big as Midgarders and dressed just like them, leaped out and went running to the slave barracks. Others went running to the kitchens. Midgarder warriors came pelting out, pulling on their armor. Dwarven crossbow bolts struck them down before they could come close enough to swing an axe. Then the big “dwarves” came running, shooing slaves before them, seeming to threaten them with their bows. The slaves leaped down into the hole.
More Midgarder warriors came, but stopped well back from the hole and raised bows, loosing arrows of their own. Spears flew, and a few dwarves fell, transfixed—but the crossbows spewed death, piercing Midgarder armor. The archers fled, unable to match the rate of fire or the penetrating power.
Then the dwarves were leaping back into the hole, all of them gone in a matter of minutes, taking their wounded with them. The Midgarders charged the hole, but skidded to a halt at its edge, then stood around nervously looking at one another. Finally, the oldest shook his head, and they turned away, leaving a dozen to guard the hole.
“A party of women is coming!” the radio barked. “Bandit women, by the look of them!”
“This is the past,” Herkimer told them, and the picture jumped again. Alea saw the broad grassland of the North Country, bordered by its scrubby woods. Twenty-odd women were hurrying across the plain with babies in their arms and children clutching their skirts.