Free Fire Time by Poul Anderson

dolmens.
    Arnanak did not, in truth, share this belief. While a soldier of the Gathering, he had been initiated into the mysteries of the Triad. They made more sense to him than the raunchy gods of his people. But he held his peace about that, led the sacrifices as became an Overling, and today did what he did because it would add to his name.
    The Sun had almost followed the Rover below the hills – or the True Sun had almost followed the Invader – whenthey reached the spring they sought. Already it lay shrunken in a ring of dried and cracked mud. But low-growing buff-colored lia and scrubby red-leaved yan trees hung on, a meager oasis. Arnanak noticed blue shoots here and there, the early encroachments of Starkland life. Lore, handed down from ancestors who had outlived former Fire Times, said that plants of this kind could better get along then than plants of mortal sort; they became common, and drew beasts that could feed on them, which drew dauri. In this wise the parched, burnt, storm-lashed country also became haunted.
    Afterward, when the Marauder had retreated, the blue plants did too, and their animals – save for kinds like the phoenix, which always throve in South Valennen; and folk could again beget children with hope that these would grow up.
    Arnanak ordered the prisoners tethered in the best grazing the oasis offered. There was no other food. Any dried meat or fruit that anybody had brought was long since eaten; and who had strength to search for game? Free to range, he and his warriors could get something into their guts from the sparser parts of the vale.
    Night fell as they plucked and cropped. The years around Fire Time were doubly strange in that each night of advancing spring was (hereabouts) longer than the last – for the Red One so moved through heaven as to share it with the True Sun about midsummer.
    Stars glittered forth, Ghost Bridge, doubly lit small rock of Narvu, above shadowed steeps and pinnacles. The air stayed hot, but a breath of breeze came like a well-wisher’s hand. At last the victors could take their ease. Arnanak heard sighs go through the dimly seen mass of them as body after body dropped and chins sank down onto arms laid across forelegs. He settled himself by a low fire. Tornak lay at his side, and three more sons. Kusarat of Sekrusu asked if he might join them. ‘Unless you would sleep,’ he added politely.
    ‘No, I would liefer rest awake for a little,’ Arnanak said.
    ‘And I. My thoughts are still a jumble. Did I drowse offstraightaway, I’d have no hope of making a good dream for myself.’
    ‘Vu?
Do you have skill in the dream art? I knew that not.’
    ‘No, I can’t bring any forth that are worth telling,’ Kusarat admitted. ‘But I can make them pleasant … or useful.’
    Arnanak nodded. ‘Thus is it for me.’
    ‘And me,’ said Tornak. He laughed. ‘Tonight I want dreams of beer and females – not in Tarhanna nor my father’s hall, but Port Rua when we take it – that should be something! – or even Sehala.’
    ‘Be not over-eager,’ Arnanak warned him. ‘Those conquests lie afar in time; and we may not live to make them.’
    ‘The more reason to dream them,’ said Tornak’s half brother Igini. Their father signed them both to silence. They were young, their manners not yet honed. The other two were older, sober married males, though since neither had passed his sixty-fourth year, Arnanak’s power continued over them too.
    His desire was that Kusarat be shown respect. Seemingly the latter was just as anxious to please, for he asked, ‘Are these lads yours, Arnanak?’ and upon getting a yea: ‘Then you must have the rest out widely, those who’ve gotten their growth. I hear you’ve sired very many, by more different females than most of us ever get at.’
    Arnanak didn’t deny it. Besides several advantageous marriages and a row of concubines, no doubt he had made fruitful a fair number of the wives he borrowed on his travels. Husbands