Many had been killed for struggling, for attacking every human who came near them, and finally for trying repeatedly to escape.
When humans discovered that the newborns could breed immediately, they forced them to do it, and the newborns, muddled and frightened, did not know what to do but comply. The humans knew the power of music over the Taltos, and how to use it. The humans thought the Taltos sentimental and cowardly, though what the words were for it then, I don’t now know.
In sum, a deep hatred grew between us and the warriors. We thought them animals, of course, animals that could talk and make things, perfect horrors, actually, aberrations that might destroy all beautiful life. And they thought us amusing and relatively harmless monsters! For it soon became apparent that the wide world was filled with people of their height or even smaller, who bred and lived as they did, and not with people like us.
From our raids we had gathered many objects which these people had brought from far and wide. The slaves repeated tales of great kingdoms with walls about them, of palaces in lands of desert sand and jungle, of waning tribes and of great congregations of people in encampments of such size that one could not imagine it. And these encampments had names.
All of these people, as far as we knew, bred in the human way. All had tiny, helpless babies. All brought them up half-savage and half-intelligent. All were aggressive, liked to war, liked to kill. Indeed, it was perfectly obvious to me that the most aggressive among them were the survivors, and they had weeded out over the centuries anyone who was not aggressive. So they had had a hand in making themselves what they were.
Our early days in the glen of Donnelaith—and let me say here that we gave it that name—were days of intense pondering and discussion, of building the finest circle that we could, and of consecration and prayer.
We celebrated the birth of numerous new Taltos, and these we schooled vigorously for the ordeals that lay ahead. We buried many who died of old wounds, and some women who died from childbearing, as always happens, and we buried others who, having been driven from the plain of Salisbury, simply did not want to live.
It was the worst time of suffering for my people, even worse than the massacre itself had been. I saw strong Taltos, white-haired ones, great singers, abandon themselves completely to their music, and fall at last without breath into the high grass.
Finally, when a new council had been appointed, of newborns and wiser Taltos, of the white-haired and of those who wanted to do something about all this, we came to the one very logical position.
Can you guess what it was?
We realized that humans had to be annihilated. If they weren’t, their warring ways would destroy all that had been given us by the Good God. They were burning up life with their cavalry and their torches and swords. We had to stamp them out.
As for the prospect that they existed all over distant lands in great numbers, well, we bred much faster than they did—was that not so? We could replace our slain very quickly. They took years to replace a fallen warrior. Surely we could outnumber them as we fought against them, if only … if only we had the stomach for the fight.
Within a week, after endless argument, it was decided that we did not have the stomach for the fight. Some of us could do it; we were so angry and full of hate and irony now that we could ride down upon them and hack them to pieces. But in the main, Taltos simply could not kill in this way; they could not match the malicious lust of humans for killing. And we knew it. Humans would win by sheer meanness and cruelty in the end.
Of course, since that time, and possibly a thousand times before it, a people has been annihilated because it lacked aggression; it could not match the cruelty of another tribe or clan or nation or race.
The one real difference in our case was that we knew it. Whereas the Incas were slaughtered in ignorance by the Spanish, we understood much more of what was involved.
Of course, we were certain of our superiority to humans; we were baffled that they didn’t appreciate our singing and stories; we did not believe that they knew what they were doing