Page 433 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

37° Bronze and Iron [1090-1020 b.c.]

ing> hard-living warriors, accustomed to living off the country
and not too particular about loyalties, except to each other. Al­
though they were now accompanied by their families and pos­
sessions, they tended to form free-lance squadrons in the old
manner, collecting under the banner of an experienced and
popular officer and moving wherever war or rumor of war offered
a chance for a profitable period of service.
A whole new generation of soldiers of fortune grew up in the
mercenary camps of eastern Europe in the middle years of the
last century of the Second Millennium.

The horsemen picked their way along the stony pack-horse
trail by the clear blue waters of the glacier stream. Ahead of them
the mining village was out of sight around a pine-clad spur, but
its presence was marked by the pall of smoke, a thousand feet or
more higher up the mountain, which veiled the icy peaks of the
Salzkammergut and marked the site of the actual mines and
foundries of Hallstatt. There was always smoke in the evenings at
the copper mines, said the mule drivers, who had been there
before. In the evening the smelting pits were raked out, and new
fires were banked at the lode faces of the galleries anywhere up to
a hundred yards into the mountains, to split by their heat the ore
that was to be mined the following day. The captain of the escort
nodded thoughtfully, and stored the information away, together
with the other details he had gleaned on the way.
His accoutrements were unusually rich for a commander of a
mounted escort. Beneath his embossed leather saddle, a saddle­
cloth of appliqued feltwork almost swept the ground with its
woolen tassels. Silver buckles and the silver-inlaid bit set off the
intricate pattern of the leather bridle and breastband. The rider’s
cloak was tossed back to reveal the bronze scales of his body
armor and the gold-plated scabbard of his long sword. And he
bore a helmet of bronze plates mounted on red felt and support­
ing a plume of ermine.
He was indeed more than an escort captain. At the court of
the king by the Danube he held the office of Master of the Horse,
and for all that he was a foreigner he ranked with princes of the
blood. But he had learnt as a young man in the army of Tiglath-