"What?"
"Drums.... Guess I imagined it.... Lantis must have a terrific organization. Bound to, Paul, in a community of sixty thousand. Hadn't you thought of that at all? Communications, laws, disciplined army, a forest agriculture at least as good as Pakriaa's. Why, from something Pak said, I think they even have a monetary system—anyway something more elaborate than the barter that's good enough for Pak's little cluster of villages. Stone Age—but that's partly an accident of ecology, isn't it? I mean, they have to avoid the hills and open ground—wouldn't be easy to get a start in metalworking when you have to stay in the woods. I believe they're a people under strong internal pressure toward the next stage of civilization. With labor, organization, a few modern ideas, there would be ways to clean the kaksmas out of the hills. Then metals. We know the omasha breed on rock ledges wherever the kaksmas can't climb. They could be exterminated too. There's a whole world for the taking. Doc is right that the new culture has to be a blend of ours and theirs. Oh, the giants too, maybe, sometime. But it won't be done by piddling around with the kind of pretty idealism that never worked even on Earth."
Paul groped for the unspoken thing. "You'd have us join forces with Lantis?"
Spearman halted to stare at him. There was a flush of blood around his eyes, the visible pain of frustration that never gave him rest. He waited till Sears and Abara had come up. "I'm a minority. I haven't suggested a damned thing." He was silent until they reached the camp.
Abro Pakriaa was there, with seven of her soldiers. All seven wore purple skirts, insignia of leadership—"captains" was the nearest word. With makeshift pigments and brittle whitebark, Paul had recently painted such a group. The effort was for Pakriaa; she had been gravely delighted with it, seeing how prominent in it were her own vivid blue skirt and taller stature. To Paul's eyes the colors had sworn horribly, and he had been glad when the princess carried the daub away, balanced joyfully on her bald head.
Pak's seven captains made it a visit of state. Wright was soberly intent, and Ann stood by him, regally silent; play-acting for Pakriaa's benefit, but Ann sardonically enjoyed the pose. Pakriaa had gradually accepted the fact of Tocwright's leadership, but her view of the status of Charin women remained addled by contradictions; the idea of social and mental equality between the sexes eluded her completely. Dorothy sat watchful at the opening of the "home" room—Helen would be sleeping inside; Dorothy's fists were pushed into her cheeks, dark eyes upturned to Pakriaa's explanatory monologue. Abara effaced himself. Mijok loomed with folded arms on Wright's other side. The rest of the giants kept to the background.
"Abro Samiraa, Abro Kamisiaa, Abro Brodaa—" Pakriaa was naming the heads of the five northern villages. A loose alliance, but those villages had fought powerfully against Lantis a year ago and each could provide a hundred and fifty first-line soldiers and fifty of the skittish male bowmen. "They are with me, my sisters," Pakriaa said, with sad gravity and not much of her natural swagger. "The wormseed Lantis has broken custom—her own people must spit on her. For the death of my messenger I spit on her heart and loins, I spit on her footprints."
The arithmetic was simple, Paul thought. A scant twelve hundred fighters against a three-sided attack from over ten thousand. Four Charin men with rifles, automatics, scanty ammunition, heavy bows. A handful of giants who knew nothing of war but theory and whose basic nature would revolt at the reality. Spitting wouldn't help. He forced himself to attend to what Wright was saying: "There must be one commander."
"I give no orders to Abro Samiraa and her sisters, my equals."
"Would you and she and the others accept direction from one of us?"