A Wizard In Midgard
Christopher Stasheff
ISBN: 0-812-54927-9
1
Magnus walked down the road, swinging his staff in time to his footsteps and surveying the countryside. It was a neat patchwork of green and gold, even an oblong of red here and there, depending on which crop was growing where.
But as he’d seen from orbit, most of the workers in the fields seemed to be very big—six and a half feet or taller—or else very short—less than five feet or even smaller. There were children in the field, some stooping to hoe like the adults, some running around in play. If it hadn’t been for their games, Magnus might have thought them to be dwarves, too. As it was, he had to look closely to see if the short people had the proportions of adult dwarves or of ordinary children. They were all dressed in worn, patched tunics and leggins, most of which were gray or tan. Some of the garments had once had some color, but were now worn almost as gray as the others.
As he watched, an overseer spoke sharply to one of the tall men, hefting a cudgel in a threatening manner. The tall man cringed and nodded quickly, then turned back to work, stooping and hoeing with renewed vigor.
Magnus was outraged. Bad enough that any man should have to fear another that way, but worse when the slave was so much bigger and stronger, and easily the master in an even fight! But he realized that was his own bias, projecting his own situation into them, for he was seven feet tall himself. Something hard cracked on the side of his head.
Pain wracked his skull, and Magnus stumbled and fell to his knees, the whole world swimming about him even as he realized he’d let himself become distracted, lowered his vigilance—but his staff snapped up to guard position by sheer reflex. He hadn’t even seen his attacker approach, hadn’t heard his footsteps coming up from behind! Another stick swung at him, but he felt it coming and managed to swing his staff to deflect the worst of it. A fist hooked into his face, snapping his head up, and rage broke loose. Magnus surged to his feet, roaring. The world still wobbled, but he lashed out with his staff blindly. It connected, someone shouted with pain, and Magnus snapped back to guard, head clearing, pivoting about, ready for the next blow.
There were a dozen of them who had come up cat footed behind him, all about five and a half feet tall, all grim and hard, dressed in tunics and bias-hosen of bright colors and stout cloth, each with a staff or a cudgel, three at the back with swords, two with bows.
Magnus read their intent by their armament alone—to capture him if they could and kill him if they could not. Half a dozen of them stepped in, sticks slashing. Magnus caught one on his staff, another, a third, but two more struck his shoulders and one his head, hard. The world swam again, panic churned up from the depths, and Magnus realized he was fully justified in using his psi powers. He projected raw emotion broadcast, a numbing fear, and swung his staff like a baseball bat. It struck one man in the ribs, knocking him into another; both fell, bringing down a third, and the rest ran, howling with fear. But pain exploded on the back of Magnus’s head, a thud resounded through his skull, and as he fell, he realized that one of the hunters was a man of true courage who hadn’t let his fear stop him. Then midnight claimed him.
In the darkness, one single thought rose: that he should have realized the depth of these people’s hatred for anyone bigger than themselves. The thought brought a dream of memory, of watching from above as a double rank of Vikings bellowed their battle cry and charged a row of giants, four of them to each titan. The giants met them with roars and quarterstaves—steel quarterstaves, to judge by the way the Vikings’ axes and swords glanced off them.
The giants fought back to back, staves whirling as they fended off blows from three sides at once, striking downward at men only two-thirds their height. The Vikings used their size to advantage, though, leaping in under the giants’ guards to slash and chop at their legs. Here and there, a giant went down, and the Vikings leaped in to butcher him quickly before other giants could come to his rescue—which they did, for those steel quarterstaves cracked the Vikings’ helmets and drove their blades back against their own bodies.
Suddenly it was over, and the Vikings were leaping away, retreating back to their own side, forming a ragged line that turned and fled. One or two giants roared and started after them, but their mates caught them and pulled them back. Watching them on his viewscreen, Magnus guessed, “The giants have fallen for that trick before—chased the Vikings to their own doom.”
“No doubt,” said a voice from thin air—or from the concealed loudspeakers in the spaceship’s lounge. “I suspect the Vikings led them into swamps, where they floundered, easy prey for spears and arrows.”
“Or led them under trees thick with spearmen.” Magnus nodded. “The giants have learned their lesson. They’re holding their line.”
On the viewscreen, the giants were indeed standing firm, breathing hard and waiting for the smaller men to come back. Their mouths moved as they called to one another, but of course Magnus couldn’t hear what they were saying. “I wonder if they’re speaking Terran Standard.”
“We can send down a probe with an audio pickup,” the voice offered.
“Now, Herkimer,” Magnus reproved, “you know I’m not rich.”
Herkimer was the name he had given his ship’s computer and, therefore, the ship itself. It navigated and operated the vessel, monitored his life support systems, cooked his meals, cleaned the ship, and to top it off, dredged up an amazing variety of facts from its vast memory.
“I’m happy enough with pictures,” Magnus told the computer. “In fact, I’m amazed the electronic telescope can zoom in tightly enough to show a close-up of a human face from an orbit twenty thousand miles above the planet’s surface.”
The world was listed by the name of “Siegfried” in the atlas of colonized stars. That alone had been enough to send Magnus to searching it out. There had been a record of a colonizing expedition and the general direction in which they intended to search for a habitable home, but none of where they had landed or whether they had survived. It had been an interesting search.
“It is impressive.” Being a computer, Herkimer couldn’t really be impressed by anything. “But a microphone that could reach so far is completely out of the question.”
“No need, when all we’re trying to do is gain an overview of the situation.”
The giants waited a long time as the Vikings retreated, step by step. Even when they were out of sight, half the giants stayed on guard. The other half turned to tend the wounded.
“Do you suppose some of those giants could be women?” Magnus asked.
“Quite possibly,” Herkimer answered, “but it is difficult to say. They’re all wearing the same armor, over similar tunics and cross-gartered leggins.”
“But some of them don’t have beards,” Magnus pointed out, “and the ones who don’t, have breastplates that bulge outward more than the men’s do.”
“It is possible,” the computer admitted. “Odd that their men would not object to risking them, though.”
“Maybe not, when they’re so badly outnumbered,” Magnus said, “and when any one of them is big enough to be a match for three of the Vikings. Of course, they come at the giants in squads of four…”
“We must count it a hypothesis to be examined more closely,” Herkimer cautioned. “We need more data.”
“How strange those giants look.” Magnus couldn’t help thinking of them as anything but giants, when they were half again as tall as the Vikings and five times as massive. Their thighs looked to be two feet thick, and their upper arms more than a foot. Their hips were four feet wide, and their shoulders five. “They’re so broad and thick that they seem short.”