She had never seen anything like it before, and though she knew it was an inevitable consequence of this planet’s level of technology, the knowledge had never actually prepared her for the actual sight of it. The scene, and of course the smell, were overwhelming. The sound was worst of all, somehow, for there was no sound, nothing but the whisper of ragged tents in the wind, the toothless mumble of a hag over her begging-bowl, the whimper of a dying child — such silence, compared to the bustle of the landing stage and the town. The silence of despair, of an entire population conserving their strength because they knew there was no place to go, no home for them, no hope...
Fiona spoke to one of the men in livery and inquired. There had been a war, he said, between two of the neighboring barons, squabbling over a fertile province that each coveted: as a result the place had been made a wasteland, and the hopeless refugees had come here. They had arrived over the course of the winter, and the bones of those who hadn’t survived the journey were still lying huddled by the trails.
That, she saw, was why the castle had been repaired: the local lord might find himself dragged into the conflict, and even if he avoided that he might have thousands more refugees dumped in his lap when the warfare heated up again in the spring. He was trying to be humane, Fiona thought, but he was looking to his security and probably cursing his choices. If more refugees came he might have to seal his gates, care for his own people, and let those outside starve; or he might simply slaughter them lest they turn brigand.
There was nothing Fiona could do for them, nothing perhaps but aid an individual, a child... Fiona dropped some change into the bowl of a slack-eyed woman who was nursing a child at her shrunken breast. The woman’s thanks were mumbled; her eyes scarcely brightened at the sight of the money, though it should have been enough to keep her and her child for a week. It had come too late, Fiona thought; the woman might not have the energy left to be able to process food into nourishment for her infant.
Fiona fled back to the barge and cursed herself for cowardice.
She spent one night on the barge before the craft was scheduled to head downstream to the city of Arrandal, her destination. During the night the hold was loaded with local produce, the harvested winter crop, and with blocks of grey, hard stone, products of the local quarries. In the hours before departure she saw her first Brodaini: tall, disdainful men and women, their long hair arranged in elaborate ringlets and lovelocks, all bearing armor and weapons both alike in their clean, symmetrical beauty and their utilitarian, deadly purpose — elegantly crafted stuff, the armor a functional mixture of brigandine and plate, the hilts of the swords elaborately carved and inlaid with precious metal. Each carried a ten-foot spear on which a long, sharp, wickedly-curved sword blade glittered.
They were by far the tallest people on the boat: the smallest stood a head taller than Fiona. In addition to the stature that was their inherited due, Fiona knew they ate a special diet, one her ship’s computers had calculated would produce muscle and weight without adding more than a healthy amount of fat.
The demeanor of the Brodaini, their reserved physical presence, each movement controlled with the careful economy of the trained athlete, set them off completely from the hurried bustle of the landing stage. The four Brodaini, two men and two women, took cabins on the port side and remained in them until the barge raised its creaking yard, sheeted the patched square sail, and cast off. Afterwards, from time to time, Fiona saw them, always together, always distant, standing apart from the others on the deck. They did not take their meals with the rest due to their special diet.
She would have to study this people, she knew, and she watched them when she could. It was curious, a warrior race that gave high status to their women. There would be reason for such an anomaly, she thought; she hoped she would be able to find it.
It was a leisurely, sunny journey to the city; although it rained occasionally, the showers were scarcely of long enough duration to more than temporarily discomfort the deck passengers who slept on the forward hatches. Fiona grew to recognize most of her fellow passengers: the children who played on the hatch covers, the elderly, dyspeptic merchant who lived in the next cabin and who spent each night lecturing his companion, a tolerant nephew, in a whining, querulous voice. The crew of the barge belonged to a single family: there was a husband and wife, five children, a brother and sister-in-law just starting life together, and a toothless granny.
Fiona spent her time watching the passengers and crew, watching the bank of the river and seeing the new world revealing itself around each bend, the planet called Echidne in the old star charts of the Terrans, Demro in the Abessas language spoken on the plain and in Arrandal. Achadan by the Brodaini, who had come across the ocean from the north. On the banks of the river Fiona could see square fields newly-planted, men and women working on the levees and dykes, villages clustered on high ground safe from spring floods, frequent towers and castles occupied by the feudal aristocracy. The barons didn’t dare charge tariffs on the river traffic; they knew it would only bring the power of Arrandal on them, a fleet of river-craft full of plundering mercenaries, Brodaini engineers, deissin overseers. It had happened before: every so often Fiona saw torn curtain walls and shattered keeps, massive ruins that loomed above the river and bore eloquent witness to the power of the North.
That power came from city-states which, lying on the coast of a great northern sea, had in the last century been expanding their influence. The largest social units on this part of the planet, they controlled trade on the rivers and the sea and had been encroaching on the feudal privileges of the southern barons, regularizing their quarrels, stabilizing political relationships. They were not doing it for the sake of peace and amity, Fiona assumed; she knew that trade required stable borders and an orderly flow of season commerce, and that the big cities thrived on merchant traffic. They were the source of stability on a chaotic continent; their trade networks extended far abroad, and from there any new idea or any useful innovation would be sure to spread quickly. They had even formed a federation of sorts, carving out areas of influence and trade, attempting to dominate any competition: the federation had a curious name, Elva vor Denorru-Dorsu, the Alliance of/for Community of Interests, its name alone proclaiming a certain sophistication. Of the cities, Fiona’s destination, Arrandal, seemed to be the largest — her ship’s cameras and computers approximated half a million people within its walls and suburbs — and was probably the most influential.
Much of the cities’ expansion had come in the last twenty years, since they’d formed the league between themselves and started importing Brodaini soldiers from across the sea. The Brodaini had brought military knowledge the cities lacked and a brand of professionalism the mercenaries and city militia had never known: and after the first baronial keeps had come crashing into ruin the other feudal lords had seen reason.
The broad outline Fiona knew, and some of the details. For two years her ship had been in stationary orbit above this land, sending down robot spies, driving electronic spikes into roofbeams to pick up audio and video. Computers had analyzed the languages; cameras had mercilessly scanned the interiors of native buildings, public rooms, secret chambers; spikes had driven themselves into the roof-beams of schoolhouses, watching over the students as they bent over their lessons; the writing had been learned, analyzed, and fed into the recordings that in turn had been fed into Fiona’s mind. Fiona knew as much about the culture she was entering as any outlander could.