He stood there, white-faced.
“Do not kill him!” cried the companion of the giant.
The giant regarded the fellow. No, he did not think he would stand up well against the ax attack.
“No,” cried the companion of the giant. “Civilitas! Civilitas!”
The ragged fellow turned about and fled.
The giant looked after him. He did not think the fellow could run far, or well. He thought he could be overtaken shortly, or, if one wished, pursued slowly, until he collapsed, panting, helpless, terrified, like the bark deer.
That might be amusing.
Then one could kill him.
“No, no! Do not kill him!” cried the companion of the giant. He, you see, knew the giant better than the others present. “Civilitas!”
But the giant did not pursue the running figure.
“What do you think would be his wergeld?” asked the giant of his companion, looking after the scurrying figure in the distance.
“In the empire there is no wergeld,” said his companion.
“I do not think it would be much,” said the giant.
The concept of wergeld is one which is familiar in many societies. It is, in a sense, a man-price, and it serves, in its primitive fashion, paradoxically, on the whole, to reduce bloodshed and crime. One may not kill with impunity, you see, for one must be prepared to pay the man-price of a victim to his people, his family, his relatives. Wergeld differs from man to man, depending on such things as lineage, standing in the community and wealth. A yeoman, you see, would have a lesser wergeld than, say, a noble, one of high family, and so on. But if the noble were to slay a yeoman he would be expected to pay the wergeld apportioned to such a deed. The wergeld may be paid in coin, in animals, and so on. Wergeld tends not only to protect men, for they thus cannot be slain with impunity, but, even more importantly, it tends to prevent the lacerations and slaughters, sometimes devastating and well nigh interminable, disastrous to communities and families, and clans alike, which otherwise would be likely to accompany the blood feud. The matter, in theory, is done when the wergeld is paid. To be sure, some advantage here lies with the rich, who can best afford to pay wergeld, but even they, as is well know, are not likely to part lightly with their horses or sheep.
“Civilitas,” said the companion of the giant, gently.
“Ah, civilitas,” said the giant.
Was it not civilitas which made the empire truly the empire? Was this not the true gift of the empire to the galaxies, that which, when all was said and done, formed the true justification of its existence, that which was most precious in it, and of it. Did this not, this shining thing, civilitas, exceed the legions and the bureaucracy, the ships, the camps, the armament; did it not exceed and redeem the imperialism and the greed, the ferocity, the incandescent worlds, the exploitation and the cruelty; that is the meaning and glory of the empire, civilitas, had taught Brother Benjamin, who, to be sure, was no champion of the empire. Understand by this term ‘civilitas’ more than it can be said to mean, for there is more within it than can be said of it. It is one of those terms, like ‘friend’ or ‘love’, which can never be adequately defined. But understand in it, in part, at least, the unity of the highest of those hopes hinted at by words such as balance, order, proportion, harmony, law, indeed, civilization itself. It can be thought of, at least in part, as what can divide peace from war, justice from fraud, law from license, enlightenment from ignorance, civilization from barbarism. It is an ideal. It would perish.
The giant looked about himself. The fellow who had been the leader of, or foremost in, the tiny mob which had accompanied them in the streets, had now disappeared, having beaten his rapid retreat away. His fellows, some ten or twelve others, hung back. He did not think they would further follow. One of their number, as we have noted, lay at the foot of a stone wall, unconscious. He lay beneath a crooked smear of blood, which he had painted with his own body, with the back of his head, on the surface of the wall.
The giant noticed, nearby, the woman, she in embroidered leel, whom he had seen earlier. She had apparently turned about and, angrily, had followed the group, for what reason he knew not.
Again their eyes met.
“Lout!” she hissed at him.
Ah, he thought, she is angry that I regarded her, at the barrier, at the guard station.
She looked about herself, contemptuously, at the fellows about her. “Cowards! Filchen!” she scorned them.
It has been our usual practice in this narrative to use familiar expressions for resembling life forms, or, perhaps better, life forms occupying similar ecological niches or being employed for similar purposes as life forms with which the reader may be presumed to be familiar; for example, we speak, unhesitantly, of cattle, of sheep, and such beasts, but it would be useful for the reader to understand that the animals so referred to would, in most cases, not count as the cattle, the sheep, and such with which he is more likely to be familiar. The primary justification for this practice is its utility in avoiding a distractive multiplication of nomenclatures and a prolix delineation, presumably not in the best interests of the narrative, and certainly not required for its general intelligibility, of specific and generic differences among dozen of types of creatures, many uniquely indigenous to their own world, though, to be sure, also, many of which may now be found, thanks to interstellar transportation, authorized or not, intended or unintended, understood or inadvertent, on many worlds. Occasionally we do use particular names for these creatures, particularly when there seems some point in doing so. The filch, for example, is a furtive, small, gnawing, rather rodentlike animal. We have not spoken of it as a rat, or mouse, however, because in alternate generations it is oviparous. When we do speak of rats, or mice, for example, as we feel free to do, those terms are used of animals which, on the whole, would be more biologically analogous, or at least somewhat more so, to the “rats” and “mice,” and such with which the reader is presumed to be familiar. The uniformity of viable habitats, given planet-star relations, distances and such of diverse types, and the principles of convergent evolution would seem to be, in such cases, relevant considerations. In such matters, we beg the reader’s indulgence.
“Filchen,” she cried to the citizens about her. “Filchen!”
She then looked boldly at the giant.
“Barbarian!” she said.
That was the first time that that expression had been used of him, in the streets.
To be sure it was doubtless because of his appearance, the manner in which he was clad, and perhaps, too, the manner in which he carried himself, so unapologetically, so unregenerately proudly, that he had been so pursued in the streets, and so belittled.
“Let us be on our way,” said the companion of the giant.
“Wait,” said the giant.
Why had the woman followed the small company, he wondered.
He took a step toward the woman, not to threaten her, but merely to approach her.
She shrank back, but then stood her ground.
The tiny group about her, the fellows on which she had heaped her scorn, fled back.
It was almost as a swarm of flies might have withdrawn from the movement of a hand.