Category: Book Excerpt

No animal has had as profound an impact on human history as the horse. The journey begins in prehistory, with a small, shy animal that humans hunted for food. Hunters domesticated the horse in order to ensure a supply of meat and, later, mare’s milk, which is more nutritious than cow’s milk. This was a watershed event for both species, transforming the horse from an animal fleeing at a gallop from the mere smell of humans into the most valuable of their livestock. The horse’s need to roam far and wide for pasture prompted the horse herders to spread out across the Eurasian steppe. Then herders learned to ride horses in order to keep up with their far-flung herds….

— Raiders, Rulers, and Traders, Prologue

Prehistoric hunters’ enthusiasm for horse meat had a solid basis in nutrition, too. In the cold, harsh environment of the last Ice Age, horse meat proved to be high in protein, and rich in fatty acids essential for health and growth. Compared to other meat, it contains less saturated fat. Humans can digest horse meat more easily. Partly for this reason, today’s Mongols favor horse meat to wean toddlers off mother’s milk. The rarity of horse meat in European and American cuisine reflects an eighth-century [C.E.] ban by the Catholic Church, in an era in which the newly evangelized Germans consumed horse meat as part of their old pagan rituals. How else to explain the disappearance of this delicious and nutritious food from Western diets?

— Raiders, Rulers, and Traders, Chapter 1

…In Japan the great monasteries have always tended to accumulate possessions owing to the freedom from taxation and control by the civil governors that they enjoyed, and the right they had of affording refuge to those who wished to escape from the oppression of the competitive world outside. These rights needed guarding in a land like Japan, where the military were not much inclined to be frightened by the ghostly terrors with which the monks tried to threaten them, and so the soldier monk consequently eventuated. Since the temples had so much property there would be no lack of volunteers for the honor of guarding it, and the great groups of temples like Hieizan and Nara (Tendai and Ritsu sects), and later the Amida and Nichiren sects, not to speak of the Shingon of Koya and Negoro, not only resisted the military government, but fought viciously among themselves, in all cases for loaves and fishes, or fish and saké rather, and not for any particular belief in the efficacy of their doctrines….

— Shogun, Chapter 4

The eighty thousand people living in Uruk by 3000 [B.C.E.] sheltered behind walls that were forty feet high and six miles long. Archaeologists estimate these to have cost over five million man-hours to build. The fourth-millennium city occupied about 1.7 square miles, a little bit less than imperial Rome at its peak (2.1 square miles) and larger than classical Athens.

— Land Between The Rivers, Prologue

It is noticeable that the introduction of firearms through the Portuguese made it easier to get some sort of an army of comparatively untrained farmers, though the matchlock did not prove such a great asset as they may have hoped, since it was not very convenient to use when the weather was wet, as it often is in Japan, and its range was possibly not greater, and its accuracy not as great, as the bow and arrow. It is here that there is some difference between conditions in Japan and Europe, for in Japan the samurai was an archer, either horse or foot, and did not trust so much to his armor as the European knights did, neither did he advance in the massed charging formation that would be more vulnerable to gun fire.

— Shogun, Chapter 4

[Anegawa in 1570 C.E.] was a real feudal battle judging by the account in the Mikawa Fudoki, which gives a vivid picture of the bands of retainers fighting in groups, the lopping of heads by sword and bill, the confused mingling of the armies, the clouds of black smoke and dust, and above all the streams of perspiration that bathed the combatants, for it was the hottest season of the year….

— Shogun, Chapter 6

“Give as few orders as possible,” [Duke Leto Atreides] had told him once…. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”

— Dune, Book Three, Chapter 3

Thought Admiral Kethas epetai-Khemara had deep wrinkles in his knobbed forehead, hair very white at his temples. He was fifty-two years old, an age at which Klingons of the Imperial Race should be dead by one means or another, yet his eyes were clear and sharp as naked stars.

…

“Shortly you will be ten years old,” Kethas said, a figure of gold and darkness—but no dream, [Krenn] knew. “It will be time for you to choose what you will be. Have you thought on this?”

“The Navy,” [Krenn] said instantly.

Kethas did not smile. “You know that I do not require this of you? That you may, as you wish, be a scientist, or an administrator—or even a Marine?”

“I know, father. And I would not be anything else.”

Then the Thought Admiral smiled. “And so you should not….”

…

[Human] Dr. Tagore said, “I believe I once told you I had a theory, about the Klingon observance of death.”

“You did not say what it was.”

“Well, it isn’t popular among my colleagues…. At any rate, when one of our race dies, we hold a ceremony, sometimes simple, sometimes very elaborate.”

“You celebrate a death?”

“Commemorate, rather.”

“And the one dead appreciates this.”

Dr. Tagore smiled thinly, said, “That depends on the culture. But the practical function is to allow the survivors a vent for their grief, a time when emotion may be released, shared.”

“Sharing diminishes the…grief?”

“Such is our experience.”

Krenn said, “We do not do this.”

“I know. And I wonder what happens to the energy, the stress…. I think it helps to drive your culture. To expand…to conquer, if you like.”

“Nal komerex, khesterex [That which does not grow, dies],” Krenn said….

“I know that, too. And your environment is hostile, and your life-cycle is short and rapid. As I say, my hypothesis is not popular.”

…

Dr. Tagore sighed [to Krenn]. “I still have not lived among Klingons long enough. I still think of you as aging as we do…you must be, what, twenty-five?”

“Nearly so.”

“And I will be seventy-nine on my next birthday. And still we aren’t so far apart…we both have twenty or thirty years left, if we avoid violence.” Krenn was not insulted by that. “Maybe even longer….”

…

Meth was correct: information was power, secrets weapons. Krenn thought how strange it was that this secret, that he was not the son of Rustazh, had made him even more the son of Khemara; given him exactly the weapon with which Kethas had tried to arm him. The weapon of patience, against which Klingons had no defense.

— The Final Reflection, Chapters 1, 2, 6, 7, & 9

This novel was written in 1984, and the Star Trek novels have never been considered canon lore. In 1994, A Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode set the canon that Klingons live longer than Humans. Personally, I find that Dr. Tagore’s theory better explains the Klingon psyche.

I read the letter, a few sparse lines on the white piece of paper, a part of Spenser’s poem.

• “One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
• But came the waves and washed it away:
• Again I wrote it with a second hand,
• But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.”

Below four words were written in Greg’s blood.

Amehe

Tervan

Senehe

Ud

The words blazed with red fire. A powerful spasm gripped me. My lungs constricted, the room blurred, and through the dense fog the beating of my heart sounded loud like the toll of a church bell. A tangle of forces swirled around me, catching me in a twisted mess of slippery, elastic power currents. I reached out, and gripped them, and they carried me forth, far into the amalgam of light and sound. The light permeated me and burst within my mind, sending a myriad of sparks through my skin. The blood in my veins luminesced like molten metal.

Lost. Lost in the whirlwind of light.

My mouth opened, struggling to release a word. It wouldn’t come and I thought I would die, and then I said it, pouring my power into the weak sound.

“Hesaad.” Mine.

The world stopped spinning and I found my place in it. The four words towered before me. I had to say them. I held my power and said the words, willing them, forcing them to become mine.

“Amehe. Tervan. Senehe. Ud.“

The flow of power ebbed. I was staring at the white piece of paper. The words were gone and a small puddle of crimson spread across the sheet. I touched it and felt the prickling of magic. My blood. My nose was bleeding.

Pulling a dressing from my pocket, where I always carried some, I pressed it against my nose and leaned back. I’d burn the bandages later. The watch on my wrist said 12:17 p.m. Somehow within those few instants I had lost almost an hour and a half.

The four words of power. Obey, Kill, Protect, and Die. Words so primal, so dangerous, so powerful that they commanded the raw magic itself. Nobody knew how many of them there were, where they came from, or why they held such enormous hold over magic. Even people who had never used magic recognized their meaning and were subject to their power, as if the words were a part of some ancient racial memory we all carried.

It wasn’t enough to merely know them; one had to own them. When it came to acquiring power words, there were no second chances. You either conquered them or you died trying, which explained why so few among the magic workers could wield them. Once you made them yours, they belonged to you forever. They had to be wielded with great precision and using them took a chunk of power that left the caster near exhaustion. Greg and my father both warned me that the power words could be resisted, but so far I hadn’t had a chance to use them against an opponent that did. They were the last resort, when all else failed.

Now I had six words. Four given to me by Greg and two others: Mine and Release. My father taught them to me long ago. I was twelve and I almost died making them mine. This time it had been too easy.

Maybe the power of the blood grew with age. I wished Greg was alive so I could ask him.

I glanced to the floor. The orange lines of Greg’s ward had grown so dim, I could barely see them. They had absorbed everything they could.

The words clamored in my head, shifting and tossing, trying to find their place. Greg’s last gift. More precious than anything he could have given me.

— Magic Bites, Chapter 2

Author’s emphases, both bold and italic.

“Why all the secrecy, Bishop? And the white smoke?”

“The Church is more often good theater these days than good religion. The secrecy originated in this century. Before the collapse of the papal states, the cardinals used to vote in St. John Lateran and live in the Lateran Palace. Each day they would walk down the street to the basilica of St. John Lateran for their day’s work and chat with the populace…. Even when the conclave was moved up to the Sistine Chapel, there was little attempt to keep the events secret. Everyone knew at the end of the day what the count was and who had voted for whom. The secrecy was imposed to protect the cardinals from the Roman emperor, that is to say, the Austrian emperor, whose ambassador had vetoed an election in 1903.”

“There isn’t an Austrian emperor anymore,” I said.

“You’ve noticed?”

— White Smoke, p. 71

The book is historical fiction but the historical fact is true.

No one knew better than Alexander [the Great] that heroic temperaments such as his own were subject to excesses: as he was excessively brave and extravagantly generous, he was excessively vengeful and extravagantly passionate when thwarted.

— The Gates of Hell, Chapter 1

In southern Holland there appears to have been a taboo against placing weapons in graves, which occurs but very rarely, perhaps indicating that weapons were less a personal possession than held on behalf of the group…. This changes in the Early Iron Age, after about 800 BCE, when male graves with weapons do occur more frequently…. Swords in graves have often been altered, in ways that require considerable skill, such as fashioning them into a circle or folded, concertina-like, which has the side-effect of putting them out of use as swords; bending swords in this way without breaking them requires at least as much skill as making them in the first place….

— Magic: A History, p. 225

Good luck using that (magical?) sword you looted! 😀

…Now we came to a region of caves, hollowed and windswept, and Buliwyf dismounted from his horse, and all the warriors of Buliwyf did likewise, and proceeded by foot. I heard a hissing sound, and verily I saw puffs of steam issue from one and another of these several caves. We entered one cave and there found dwarves.

They were in appearance thus: of the ordinary size of dwarf, but distinguished by hands of great size, and bearing features that appeared exceedingly aged. There were both male and female dwarves and all had the appearance of great age. The males were bearded and solemn; the women also had some hair upon the face, so they appeared manlike. Each dwarf wore a garment of fur or sable; each also wore a thin belt of hide decorated with bits of hammered gold.

The dwarves greeted our arrival politely, with no sign of fear. Herger said these creatures have magic powers and need fear no man on earth; however, they are apprehensive of horses, and for this reason we had left the mounts behind us. Herger said also that the powers of a dwarf reside in his thin belt, and that a dwarf will do anything to retrieve his belt if it is lost….

Now I saw that the hissing and steam issued from great cauldrons, into which hammered-steel blades were plunged to temper the metal, for the dwarves make weapons that are highly prized by the Northmen. Indeed, I saw the warriors of Buliwyf looking about the caves eagerly, as any woman in a bazaar shop selling precious silks.

Buliwyf made inquiries of these creatures, and was directed to the topmost of the caves, wherein sat a single dwarf, older than all the others, with a beard and hair of purest white, and a creased and wrinkled face. This dwarf was called “tengol,” which means a judge of good and evil, and also a soothsayer.

This tengol must have had the magical powers that all said he did, for he immediately greeted Buliwyf by his name, and bade him sit with him. Buliwyf sat, and we gathered a short distance away, standing.

Now Buliwyf did not present the tengol with gifts; the Northmen make no obeisance to the little people; they believe that the favors of the dwarves must be freely given, and it is wrong to encourage the favors of a dwarf with gifts….

— Eaters of the Dead, Chapter 11

Alpine travel was difficult. Much of it was conducted on foot up steep slopes or, if a person had some money, by mule or ass. Mules (a cross between a male donkey and a female horse) have a lot going for them. They are intelligent, sure-footed, calm animals, strong, adaptable, and with greater endurance than horses. They live longer and can travel up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) per day and are much cheaper to keep than horses. The horse had snob value—a bit like traveling business or first class—but usually only rulers, the wealthy, or important couriers used horses because they were expensive to buy and maintain. Their advantage was speed. Carts or coaches were rarely used for alpine travel because of the deplorable state of the infrastructure; the roads and bridges were often just the remnants of Roman originals or rutted, muddy tracks. Summer and fall were the best times to travel because there was less likelihood of extreme weather—although it could still get very hot in midsummer. Sensible people avoided alpine travel in winter.

Burnished and shiny like a mirror, the sword, usually about three pounds, was a double-edged instrument of death. For most of the medieval period, at least north of the Alps, its main use was for slashing and hacking, a method that may have given the best results against chain armor. In the Mediterranean, probably due to Roman influence, the thrust was more common. It required less physical strength and stamina and could be more deadly, for a single hit on a major organ would kill.

The design of the sword did not change much in the period 800-1350 [C.E.]. The emphasis was on sharp edges more than a sharp point. But by the fourteenth century, as mounted soldiers switched from chain to plate armor, the old system of slashing was revealed to be insufficient. The tendency was to emphasize the point, which would exploit the joints in plate armor. Its length depended on the holder’s stature, but normally it was about 100 centimeters. According to L. Tarassuk and C. Blair, the typical sword of a fourteenth-century knight was long, with the blade itself being almost 1 meter.

— Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, p. 134

The military hierarchy of ranks still used in the twenty-first century was already in place by 1600 [C.E.]. A colonel was assisted by a lieutenant-colonel who commanded in his absence. A major supervised training and administration and could command part of the regiment if it became detached from the rest of it. These three ‘staff officers’ were supplemented by secretaries, chaplains, doctors and a provost in charge of punishment. The same pattern was repeated in each company, with the captain assisted by one or two lieutenants, together with an ensign (called a cornet in the cavalry) responsible for the flag. There was generally also a company scribe, a barber surgeon and a number of non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Together, these senior ranks were known as the prima plana, or ‘first page’, on account of their names being listed before all the others in the muster register. The overall size of foot companies fell from three to four hundred, to two to three hundred over the sixteenth century, with cavalry companies averaging around half these sizes. The number of officers remained the same throughout, reflecting the growing emphasis on hierarchical order and enabling more complicated manoeuvres to be carried out….

The officer-to-men ratio remained relatively static after 1590, because of the technical limitations of the available weapons that required them to be used en masse. Around one officer or NCO could supervise about fifteen soldiers, but captains found it hard to command more than three hundred, as the smoke and noise of battle limited their ability to see what was happening and to shout instructions. This was another reason why infantrymen were packed close together in large formations, since it kept them within the sight of their mounted colonel. The flags and drums would be grouped in the centre and used to signal commands to the rest of the unit. Command problems also placed a premium on experienced men and it was reckoned at least a third of the strength had to be veterans to provide cohesion and sufficient old soldiers to teach new recruits the rudiments of drill and how to survive the rigours of campaign….

— The Thirty Years War, pp. 94-95

Chinese cultures stressed participation in the world, so it is no surprise that magic was so central to cultural and political life. Chinese magic in turn [centered] on transactions, a series of bargains sought with the ancestors, so that the dead might aid the living. Through the emphasis on the ancestral dead, the working of qi (which animates all things, human and non-human), the influence of celestial bodies or earthly directions on people, in China, people and the world are closely interwoven. Imbalances in the human world, such as those brought about by an autocratic ruler, could occasion disasters in the physical world: a ruler who overstepped the mark might be seen as responsible for a bad flood or an earthquake. The Han likened these connections to stringed musical instruments: the resonances set up by people will cause similar notes to sound on the strings of the natural world. Harmony begets harmony, while imbalance also echoes through the cosmos.

— Magic: A History, p. 118

The composition of the baggage train varied greatly, depending on the time and place and the structure of the army to which it was attached. In [medieval] Iberia, for example, few wagons were used. Instead, each man-at-arms would have a mule carrying four to eight days’ provisions for himself and his servants, and the townsmen would have their own mules in smaller proportion. In England, France, and Germany, large wagon trains were the norm. A provision of one wagon for ten horsemen seems to have been fairly typical. Municipal militia contingents as well as lords had their carts, wagons, or mules. These might be numerous or few, depending on the anticipated duration, range, and purpose of the expedition, as well as the expectations of dearth or plenty in the campaign theater and the wealth of the community from which the force was drawn. One Swiss force of 440 men going to help break a siege marched with only two carts (though they were large, five-horse models): one packed with bacon, dried beef, oatmeal, barley, butter, and salt and the other with cooking gear, dishes, and tools, including scythes and sickles, as it was late June, time for the wheat harvest. A much higher ratio of wagons, around one per twenty or thirty men, was not uncommon, especially when tents had to be carried. The contingent sent by Arras to the French royal host in 1340 had six wagons drawn by nineteen horses for 200 footmen and two mounted constables, for example. Horsemen, especially nobles, required more baggage, both to support their more luxurious lifestyle and because of the need to carry a rolling reserve of bulky fodder and oats for the horses. Hence, considered as a whole, a mixed army, especially one with a large proportion of mounted men, might have as many as one baggage wagon per ten combatants, or even more.

— Soldiers’ Lives Through History, pp. 74-75

In the ancient world, people did not stand apart from the cosmos. Instead ancient states and societies explored how people were partners with a sentient universe. The cosmos operated through regular rhythms and periodic events. Much effort went into understanding the regularities of the seasons or the movements of astral bodies, as well as the generally prescribed life course of people, plants and animals. Disrupting regular changes were events, many of which were dangerous, such as famine, flood, disease, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Once it had come into being, the pantheon of gods humanized the world, both in its cyclical processes and periodic events.

— Magic: A History, p. 74

All mines are full of spirits. In the lead mines in County Durham, the men always spoke of the rock as an animal, ready to push at you as you made your way along an adit or down a shaft. In Cornwall the tin miners called the mine spirits the Knockers, as they knocked back at any man cutting away at the metal-bearing veins. They were the mine itself speaking. In sixteenth-century Germany, according to the great Renaissance theorist Georgius Agricola, these spirits were “called the little miners, because of their dwarfish stature, which is about two feet. They are venerable looking and clothed like miners with a leather apron about their loins.”

Most of the time the Knockers were gentle and friendly, hanging about in the shafts and tunnels, only turning vicious if the miners ridiculed or cursed them. You needed to treat them with respect. Whistling could offend them, as could intentionally spying on what they were doing. They liked to be left in the shadows or the depths of the mines, or even behind the rock, knocking from inside it. Many miners placed small offerings of food or candle grease in the mine to feed and satisfy them. If you were good to them, they would show you where to find the metal.

As Ronald Finucane, the historian of the medieval subconscious, has said, ghosts “represent man’s inner universe just as his art and poetry do.” Ghosts are what you fear or hope for. The mine, if the gods favored you, could provide a sort of magically immediate richness not to be found in the surface world. But all was hidden until you found it. And that reward-from-nothing was reflected in the miners’ attitudes toward metals. In Cornwall, they thought that iron pyrites when applied to a wound would cure it. Even water that had run over iron pyrites was said to be medicinal. Cuts washed in it would heal without any other intervention. But also in Cornwall, and in the parts of the United States where Cornish tinners immigrated and took their ancient beliefs with them, Knockers were thought to be ugly and vindictive. Miners who were lamed were known to be victims of the Knockers’ rage. Insult them, and they could damage you for life.

It is a commanding cluster of images: lightlessness, the spirits of the underworld, the hope for treasure and happiness, wounding, cures, the half-glimpsed, the dreaded, a realm of pain and power. This is the dark basement of the [Heroic] world, the place that metal came from, emerging through processes that were unknown and unintelligible to most of the population, but somehow providing the power-soaked tools with which the killer-chiefs dominated the landscape.

It is at least a possibility that Homer’s Hades is a nightmare fantasy fueled by the Bronze Age experience of the mine: a place in which spirits are clearly present but not to be grasped; where life has sunk away from the sunlight to the mute and the insubstantial; to beings that are only half there, regretting the absence of the vivid sunlight above; where a mysterious sense of power lurks in the dark. “When it comes to excavated ground, dreams have no limit,” Gaston Bachelard wrote in The Poetics of Space. When you are underground, “darkness prevails both day and night, and even when we are carrying a lighted candle, we see shadows standing on the dark walls … The cellar is buried madness.”

— Why Homer Matters, Chapter 8

At the bottom of the scale is the small fief of a single knight. As a rough estimate, it takes the labor of fifteen to thirty peasant families, working a holding of forty to one hundred hectares, to support one knight, his family, and his warhorse. (A hectare is 10,000 square kilometers, or about 2½ acres.) On such a small manor, the knight lives little better than his peasants.

— Who Lives In That Castle?, Dragon Magazine #80