At four kilometers above the city Matthew slowed and began spiraling toward it in broad loops.
“I almost said that’s a handsome city,” said Nikko Kumalo, “but I think impressive’s the better word.”
“I’d go for both,” said Mikhail Ciano. “Whoever built it was a damned good engineer.”
At two hundred meters they leveled off and circled, and Matthew switched the hull to one-way transparent. Below they could see growing clusters of people staring upward toward them. He fingered a dial beneath the viewscreen and a group on a rooftop snapped into large magnification.
He whistled silently. “What do you think of that?”
“Soldiers!” said Chandra Queiros.
Matthew shifted the view from place to place; soldiers were present or even prominent almost everywhere, straight-backed and hard-faced. Mikhail Ciano watched thoughtfully. “They look like Roman legionaries. I’ll bet I know now why this city isn’t walled. They’re not only the best engineers and organizers around; they’ve probably got the best army.”
Matthew pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully, then slid the pinnace into a climbing northwesterly course, leveling off at a thousand meters.
“What is it, Matt?” asked Anne Marie Queiros. “Why are we leaving?”
“I’m not ready to make real contact yet. We’ve given them a look at us-given them something to think and talk about. That’ll be enough for now.”
He looked back at the others. “We’re not prepared yet, psychologically, to deal with what looks like a military society. At least I’m not. I need to digest what we saw back there. Back home we’ve had seven centuries of peace and relative sanity; we haven’t had dealings with foreign cultures of any kind. Our responses aren’t conditioned to people like those back there.”
He looked ahead again at the broad grassland across which they flew. “Besides, there’s no hurry. I want more data, and some time to think about it.”
“There’s one thing I’ll bet I already know about them,” Chandra said.
“What’s that?”
“They didn’t built that city with heavy equipment. They built it with slaves.”
For a while they flew without further talk. “How far have we come?” Nikko asked after a bit.
“From the city? A hundred and forty-one kilometers.”
“We haven’t seen so much as a village in the whole distance. Nothing more than a few tent camps near the cattle herds.”
“Well there’s something over there,” Mikhail said pointing. “About three hundred degrees from course azimuth.”
They peered at a low cloud of distant dust, then Matthew turned the craft in a broad arc, climbing as he did so. Mikhail targeted the viewscreen and set it on automatic hold. In a little more than a minute they were hovering at 4,500 meters, too high to be noticed when motionless.
From there they watched two mounted companies approach each other a little distance apart; Nikko reactivated the camera. Abruptly both sides broke into a gallop, and Mikhail increased magnification. The smaller troop, of perhaps thirty men, rode in a near-perfect line with lances raised. The other line was ragged, its riders lanceless, and a flight of arrows coursed from it, and another. Lancers and horses began to fall, and their ranks closed to fill the holes. Then the bowmen’s line fragmented, its riders veering in pairs to the sides, drawing swords, forcing the lancers to slow and turn, losing the momentum that made their lances effective. Some lances dipped to strike regardless while others were dropped in favor of swords, and Mikhail raised the magnification again. Horses and men milled in concentrated violence amid billowing tawny dust, striking, colliding, falling.
They watched with shocked fascination. In moments the surviving lancers broke away to flee. Bowmen pursued them, loosing arrows. Three lancers dropped from their horses. Six horses fell, tumbling their riders. None escaped. The bowmen rode near the unhorsed, stopped casually to take aim, then shot them and dismounted. Mike zoomed the lens to full magnification. Even through the resultant image waver they could see the grins as the victors scalped the fallen. Shifting the focus showed other scalpings at the battle site nearby.
“Talk about savages,” Chandra whispered.
“Let’s break out the automatic rifles and run them off,” Mikhail suggested. “Maybe shoot a few of their horses to give them the idea.”
“No.” Matthew’s voice was thoughtful but positive, and he tilted the pinnace in a descending spiral. “We don’t know which side are the good guys yet.” Shortly they hovered only twenty meters above the grass, at an oblique angle convenient for viewing through the craft’s side. The scalpers had stopped, standing erect to watch the pinnace, and a glance at the viewscreen showed their magnified faces narrow-eyed, intent, without apparent fear. They were strong-necked and hard-faced, wearing braids and short beards, their shoulders heavy in mail shirts, thighs powerful in soft leather breeches. After a few still moments followed by some verbal exchange, one unslung his bow, strung it, and fired at the Alpha while the others watched.
On board they could hear the faint rap as the arrow struck. “Incredible!” Chandra breathed. “They’re insane!” After a short pause, other raps sounded. Then the bowmen gathered, talking with frequent glances upward. Most mounted and sat with an eye on the pinnace while several still on foot moved about working efficiently with their knives. Then they too mounted, and all fanned out to collect the loitering horses of the fallen of both sides. Slender ropes uncoiled, and when they rode away, with occasional backward looks, a number of them had a spare horse trailing.
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?”