Bodin's Raid

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows (see reference below) by Poul Anderson:

is an sf novel;

is one volume of Anderson's main future history series, the History of Technic Civilization;

is the concluding installment to be collected in Volume VI of Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga;

opens with an untitled, italicized passage that refers to a future historical event, Bodin's raid, with which the reader is as yet unfamiliar;

asks how the tale of this raid should be told;

laments the passing of the poet, Andrei Simich, who thrilled both human and zmay with his lays of the heroes of "...this our Morning Star..." (Scroll down.)
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT p. 341;

in the absence of Simich, reluctantly settles for the "...poor plain words..." (p. 342) of Poul Anderson!

Observations
No mention as yet of Flandry although he comes on-stage very soon in the opening sentence of the first numbered chapter.

We are not yet familiar with "zmay" although it will turn out to be a new name for a familiar species.

Here, in this introduction, is a whole new planet with native organisms, human colonists and historical events in addition to the many well imagined planets that have already appeared in this future history series.