"Luis, do you anticipate any trouble with this
crowd here?" he asked.
"How about it, Mark? What do they look like to you? Warlike?"
"No." He stated the opinion he had formed. "I had a close look at
their weapons when they came in for their presents. Hunting arms.
Most of the spears have cross-guards, usually wooden, lashed on,
to prevent a wounded animal from running up the spear-shaft at the
hunter. They made boar-spears like that on Terra a thousand years
ago. Maybe they have to fight raiding parties from the hills once
in a while, but not often enough for them to develop special
fighting weapons or techniques."
"Their village is fortified," Meillard mentioned.
"I question that," Gofredo differed. "There won't be more than
a total of five hundred there; call that a fighting strength of
two hundred, to defend a twenty-five-hundred-meter perimeter, with
woodchoppers' axes and bows and spears. If you notice, there's no
wall around the village itself. That palisade is just a fence."
"Why would they mound the village up?" Questell, in the screen
wondered.
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