Riding single file along a narrow forest path with two local guides, Carl:
sees brush and fern, sun on trees and a red squirrel;
hears chattering birds, running water, overarching stillness, his guides' talk, plodding hoofs, squeaking leather and jingling metal;
smells green growth.
The woods are full of dangerous packs of wild dogs descended from animals that had been tame before the Doom. When a wild dog howls at night, the farm dog snarls in reply and two boys go out to check the sheep.
Cities wrecked and burned by the Doom are taboo because early explorers died from "...the 'glowing death'..." (p. 20), a sign of divine anger. However, one or two centuries after the Doom, a few outcasts entered the cities and their descendants live there to mine metal. We have seen cities mined in Anderson's The Winter Of The World and SM Stirling's Emberverse.
These are predictable consequences of a limited nuclear war.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I think Poul Anderson should have added somewhere in his Maurai stories that mining dead cities for their metals after the War of Judgment would have at least partly made up for the lack of easily accessible ores suitable for mining.
Sean
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