"The Sky People" presents two viewpoint characters:
Loklann sunna Holber, captain of the skyship, Buffalo;
Ruori Rangi Lohannaso, captain of the seaship, Dolphin.
Ruori explores and trades. Loklann raids. He lands, kills a man, captures the man's wife to sell to a Mong slave trader and decides that prisoners will be kept in the temple (cathedral) until it is plundered. When a priest emerges wielding a cross, Robra sunna Stam, mate of the Buffalo, kills him with an ax blow to the head and kicks the body aside.
I am out of sympathy with the Sky People, as with the Irish barbarians that raid France in The King of Ys. Whatever a tribe's material condition, there has to be better way to survive and thrive than by murder and plunder.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with you in not sympathizing with the Mericans of "The Sky People," despite them starting to reinvent the scientific method. They were otherwise still barbarians and savages who needed to be RESISTED by the Meycans.
I recall Ruori suggesting near the end of the story that the Meycans could try sending missionaries to these pagans. Conversion to Christianity would be one means of taming these barbarians.
Ad astra! Sean
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