Alvar blushed. “You talk funny,” he said. “You are not of the People. Even the Sydnorskar talk better than that.”
“True,” Ilse said. “I am Deuts, and I’ve only been learning your tongue since last fall. But now I also am one of the People because Nils is, and I am his wife.”
They rode without talking for a bit, but shortly Alvar asked: “Are you a thought reader, like Nils, that can look into people’s minds?”
“Yes.”
Alvar blushed again.
“But I have always been able to do that,” she went on, “all my life, and I’m used to people’s thoughts. I think you are a fine boy with a good mind. Before long you will be a good man and an able warrior. I tell you that honestly.”
Nils grinned across at her.
“Our sword master curses me sometimes,” Alvar launched on. “Quite often in fact. But he curses most of us a lot. He curses Ola least of all, and one of the Ukrainians the clan adopted that we have named Tryn because his nose is so big. They are the two best with swords in our whole ring.
“By the time the snow started to melt though, we were too hungry and didn’t train much. And the horses were thin. Some of the old people died, and many of the Ukrainians. We left as soon as the ground was bare enough in the open and the horses could eat the dead grass. Ukrainian grass is very nourishing for horses. And as we traveled we ate everything we came across-deer, wild cattle, wild horses, wolves, hares-everything. The acorns bound up our bowels so that everyone was sick.” He grimaced. “Then we made bark soup to loosen them, and that was worse. But since we arrived in the orc land we have had all the cattle we can eat, and fresh blood and milk to drink, so we are all hard-fleshed again and everyone feels strong.
“The People like this land. They didn’t want to stay in the Ukraine because it was so poor in cattle, and the warriors say it is shameful to rob the Ukrainians who have so little.” He shook his head. “But it’s a pleasure to raid the orcish herds. And here we can live where the mountains meet the Great Meadow, with all the timber we need and endless pasture. We will force the orcs to attack us and then kill them. Kniv Listi is our war leader now. He is of the Weasel Clan, of the Jotar.” They were riding up a narrow foothill valley now, and Nils looked it over with interest. Its walls were forested, the south-facing with open pine stands, the opposite mostly with dense fir. The valley floor was meadow, encroached upon trom the sides by pines and broken with groves of birch and aspen. A stream meandered about its midline, swollen by melting mountain snow.
Alvar chattered on. “Some of the mountain people attacked a party of us when we first camped here. They liked to hunt in this valley and wanted to drive us away. We let two of them go, and afterward a chief came who spoke some Anglic and talked with some of our people who speak it. The mountain folk are terrified of the orcs and do whatever they tell them, even deliver their prettiest girls. We told them we are going to kill all the orcs we can and drive the rest out of the country. We told them if they don’t bother us we will not kill them, that it is only the orcs we feud with, but they must not spy on us for the orcs. A few of their young men have come to join us, and they are teaching us the country and some of the language.”
Emerging from a birch grove they came in sight of a large encampment of tiny huts with low log walls, in loosely ordered rows instead of the customary neoviking ring. The clan totem stood near the center, a crude representation of an otter.
“We have not built real villages yet,” Alvar explained. “It was decided we probably will have to move: we must be light on our feet. And the orcs will burn whatever we have built.”
That night the Council of Chiefs and the War Council, from all the neoviking clans, met around a tall fire beneath the stars. A chieftain, referring to him as the Yngling, suggested that Nils Jarnhann replace Kniv Listi as War Leader.
Nils stood in the circle of firelight, greasy braids resting on his wide heavy shoulders, and looked around him. “I thank Ulf Vargson for his faith in me. But I know of Kniv Listi, of his cunning and resourcefulness. His raids have been told of in the longhouse of my village. I prefer to leave the leadership in his experienced hands and act as counsel to him, as I did to Bjorn Arrbuk when he led us in humiliating the orcs and horse barbarians time and again.
“Having said this, I will ask something of you. I would like to search the tribes for those who have prophetic dreams, or who sometimes seem to know what another will say before he says it. Some few of them will prove to have psi-power, as I have, but undeveloped. Trained, their minds can be as valuable to us as swords or bows.”
VI
Tolkien conceived of Mordor, stinking Mordor, wasteland, blasted, land of vile depravities unnamed; washed with reeking acid rain, too corrupt for any greenness, splintered mountains round a fissured plain.
For how could Mordor, foul, perverted, smile beneath a sun?
How lie green with fragrant grass?
How lie spotted white and gold with gently nodding flowers, atrill with birdsong, sweet with loveliness?
From EARTH, by Chandra Queiros
The Phaeacia resembled a giant guitar pick-a reflective ellipsoid seventy-one meters long, thirty-three wide, and somewhat thicker aft than foreward. Functional outriggings broke but did not spoil the symmetry of her lines. Much of her volume was occupied by the drive units, life support system, and a hangar for the two pinnaces. Living and working space for her crew of thirty-one and the sixteen members of the exploration team was adequate but tight.
A gong signalled three bells in the “afternoon” watch. The full exploration team and the ship’s two ranking officers crowded into the narrow conference room to sit shoulder to shoulder around the polished hardwood table. When everyone was seated, Matthew Kumalo stood up. Conversation died and seventeen pairs of eyes settled on him.
“I’ve called us together to review the situation down below and how we’ll approach it. If any of you think I’m wrong about it, I know I can trust you to tell me.”
There were smiles around the table.
“Now I don’t see us in any real danger down there if we’re careful and use our heads. There is no possibility whatever that anyone on this planet has anything that can break our force shields. Any comments?”
“Yes.” The speaker was Alex Malaluan, historian, who had studied everything available on research methods in archaeological anthropology. On New Home, of course, there was no such field, but the university library had material on it dating from old Earth. “Contact Prime stands on a part of the site of the old Romanian city of Constanta. So let’s call it Constanta instead of Contact Prime. It sounds more like a place where people live-more human.”
“Okay,” said Matthew, “Constanta it is.”
“What happened to the old city?” someone asked. “It hasn’t been much more than seven hundred Earth years since it was a going concern.”
“I expect the rounded hillocks we’ve seen, grown over with grass, are all that’s left of it,” Alex replied.
“How come? On some sites there are still some old buildings standing and a lot of recognizable rubble piles. Why are others like Constanta so smoothed over?”
Matthew interrupted. “Can you answer that in one hundred words or less, Alex? We need to get on with other things.”
“Sure. Most towns and cities were built largely of materials not intended to last. They built buildings to knock down in twenty years or so, and replaced them with new ones that had newer engineering. They rejuvenated the material chemically and physically and remolded it for reuse. In some cities they made a point of maintaining selected old buildings or neighborhoods of stone or concrete construction, out of a sense of tradition; in fact a few old historical cities were quite largely maintained that way, although they were ringed with tracts of later, disposable-type construction. Those of us who flew over old Budapest were very impressed with the ruins there. But Constanta must have been virtually all late construction.”