Meeting the Denna, by Sophonisba [strange new worlds and alien geographies challenge]
-title- Meeting the Denna
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating/warnings- Very, very nearly suitable for general audiences, except for one word. Missing scene for " H. s. s. vialacteanus".
-spoilers- Uh... general for second season, I suppose.
-characters- Sheppard, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. Neither are the originals of the literary references.
-word count- 2488
-summary- Another op'ning of another trade mission -- with luck, one that will go well, although Rodney's beginning to have his doubts.
I meant to write all sorts of stuff for this challenge, and started writing in several directions at once -- and then I had a birthday, and the Bestest Little Sister in the World (aka konoha) and her Partner in Crime gave me the first-season box set of SGA, and... uh. Well. Yeah.
Meeting the Denna
- Somehow or another, Rodney McKay had once graphed, AR-1 seemed to be getting an annoyingly high percentage of three types of missions.
1: Missions that were doomed from the beginning. This, of course, included the times they'd gone through the Stargate only to be attacked by people obviously in no mood for a chat, and had to hold the savage natives off until they could dial home again.
Worse than that, although less immediately perilous, were the times when they got to the local village only to find it deserted, either abandoned in a tearing hurry or more likely strip-culled. Zelenka had said once that he had heard that the Ukraine was running a tourist service where, for a short period of time well within the limits of safe exposure, one could be escorted into the dead zone and through Chernobyl. At the time McKay'd wondered aloud what repeated exposure was likely to be doing to the guides; now, he wondered what kind of people paid money for the experience, and what kind went in over and over knowing what awaited them for mere money.
He had eventually also so classified the time they'd dialed an address and neither the Stargate nor, according to the next Daedalus sweep, the planet were there any more. Ronon said the world had been known as Charn: this seemed rather fitting for some reason he couldn't consciously remember.
2: Missions that started well and then either fizzled or outright went to hell. This included Chaya's world, anything involving the Genii ever, the time AR-1 had been anathematized when Ford wouldn't put the baby back out on the garbage heap and they wound up bringing it home and giving it to Halling's family, the iratus bug thing, and the people who believed that Asian-looking people were designed by nature to be the slaves of less strongly neotonous adults. Rodney'd found himself to be unnaturally gentle with Dr. Kusanagi for a week after that, and it had undoubtedly given him some sort of a complex.
Also Doranda.
3: Missions that started out crappy and then ended well. While in some ways an improvement over the other two, things like the volcano planet or the mess with the Aramites weren't doing anything for his blood pressure, even though being hailed as a hero had been sweet (making discoveries that changed the face of science was in his job description. Pulling miracles out of his ass, despite the widespread Atlantean delusion to the contrary, was not) and the Aramites were settling in nicely in their own new village on the mainland.
After that one, Katinka Pellegrom had added the likelihood of discovering a planet or moon called "Porthos" to the numerous betting pools she'd been running since the first year on Atlantis. Kavanagh had used to complain that McKay or Weir should really shut down such unprofessional behavior on Pellegrom's part, but honestly. Rodney McKay might have committed social solecisms in his time, some of which could possibly have been considered apparently something less than intelligent, but he had never been dumb enough to tick off someone who wore the hats of sysadmin and cook.
(In fact, he'd made his graph more readily available to Pellegrom, so that she could calculate the probabilities and by extension the odds for the books she would run.) -
When they came through the Ring of the Ancestors this time, as the pictures from the MALP machine had shown, they found themselves in a small clearing in the woods. A well-worn, not-quite broad path led from the Ring through the silent forest.
AR-1 exchanged a simple look before falling into their preferred positions for exploring hostile territory. Doctor McKay examined his scanning device intently; the rest of them scanned the trees and the underbrush with a thousand little flicks of eyes, slowly and carefully beginning to move down the path.
Then they heard the voices -- two higher-pitched voices, apparently arguing, and loud barks of noise that Teyla identified after some moments as the cry of a dog. While her people did not tame such animals, many cultures did, after the Ancestors who had seeded humans and dogs among the stars.
Presently two young brown-skinned people in brightly colored clothes came around a bend in the path and stopped. The one slightly in the lead, a boy on the verge of manhood and apparently trying to grow sideburns, stopped and gleefully said something in a harsh language full of glottal stops and plosive consonants to his companion -- very probably, given tone and expression, that he had indeed heard the Ring's opening. He wore leather slippers and vest, brightly checked baggy trousers, and a strip of bright red fabric tied around his head that held his long hair out of his eyes. He was carrying two long poles with some sort of cord attached and was casually swinging a sling with a bullet inside back and forth.
Next to him, the dog, a rather large dog as dogs went, with black and blue-grey and white-colored fur and pointed upstanding ears, stopped with one last bark. The scent of fish wafted outward.
His comrade, a woman a few years older than he -- perhaps fifteen or sixteen -- rolled her eyes and answered him sarcastically in the same language, gesturing to AR-1 with a grand sweep of one arm. She also had a sling in that hand, two fingers holding a rock against her palm; a woven-grass basket with a matching lid hung from her other arm. Her baggy striped trousers were slightly more subdued, but the intensity of the colors of the (clashing) plaid cloth folded and pinned about her torso more than made up for it. The hair on either side of her face had been pulled into a small braid before the whole had been drawn back behind her neck.
"Uh, hi," Colonel Sheppard said.
"Welcome to the place of the Denna," the young woman replied in Ring-speech, "in battle if you come in battle, in peace if you come in peace!"
"We are peaceful traders," Teyla began. "I am Teyla Emmagan, of Athos and Atlantis, and these are Colonel Sheppard, Doctor McKay, and Ronon Dex, also of Atlantis."
"Welcome in battle?" Doctor McKay interrupted her. "Why would anyone welcome a battle?"
"We haven't had a good fight for ages," the young woman said mildly, "and one can die as easily in a cattle raid and with far less honor."
"But you aren't here to fight," the boy said with a long face.
"We are here to trade," Teyla reiterated. The younger woman looked at them carefully, nodded, and tucked her sling away in the folds of her plaid.
Her young companion looked at Teyla hopefully. "Are you by any chance the people who make those they meet have sex with them or each other in order to become partners in trade?"
"Tahn!" His friend thwapped him upside the head, her expression clearly saying "He is only a boy; do not hold it against him." It was one Teyla herself had often had occasion to use.
"I'm afraid we've never yet come across them," Ronon rumbled.
"Never yet -- oh god, do you mean to say there are people like that out there?" Doctor McKay blinked. "Where? Shouldn't you have mentioned this, oh, sooner?"
"It is always the friend of a kinsman of somebody met on a trading journey who spoke with someone who had dealt with them," Teyla explained. "Most often, with someone who first embraced their lover at the behest of these famous people. Also popular are tales of those who demand visitors strip and dance to prove their sincerity, those who welcome their guests with great ceremony and then summon the Wraith to cull the guesthouses in the night, and those who will not seal a deal without all parties drinking a potion that sends their mind to wander away from their body."
"Yeah, fuck-or-die fantasies and urban legends are popular all over," Colonel Sheppard said, "although usually we don't combine the two."
The native woman shook her head, apparently reminding herself of her responsibilities. "I am Kindauss Clearsighted, born of the Steep Water, of the Corbies, to the Red Bull; and this is Tahn, son to Bayghee of the Red Bull, born of the White Rabbit, of the Corbies. Come. I will take you to the Hostin."
AR-1 exchanged glances and followed her. Tahn tucked his slingstone into a purse hanging from his leather belt and looped his sling through the dog's collar, firmly holding on to the makeshift lead.
"Catch many fish?" Colonel Sheppard asked pleasantly as the path wound through the trees.
"Some," Tahn shrugged. "We'd have caught more, only I heard the Ring belch, and we came to see if it was a war party, or maybe cattle raiders. Kindauss said that they'd have to be awfully stupid raiders to come through in broad daylight, but I said that there were plenty of awfully stupid people in the worlds -- "
"Of whom Tahn of the White Rabbit is not the least," Kindauss threw over her shoulder. "If you really thought enemies might have come through the Ring, why were we on the path?"
"Well -- I -- why were you?"
Kindauss sniffed and walked haughtily forward.
"Why do you keep your Stargate off in the forest?" Doctor McKay asked, nearly tripping over a tree root. "If this path were wider and you dug the roots out of it -- "
"It would be easier for strangers to drive cattle through, and offer less opportunities for us to ambush them on the way home," Kindauss answered.
"Besides, the last time the Wraith came, two of their darts struck trees -- bang! kapow! -- before they culled some of the trees out of their way," Tahn added, describing the action with hand motions. "We haven't really bothered to clear any out since then, in case it happens again."
"The Wraith are usually better pilots than that," Colonel Sheppard pointed out. "Depressingly."
"Maybe they were hypoglycemic Wraith," Doctor McKay offered. "Er, speaking of which, you know they've woken up now, right?"
"People told us," Tahn answered. "They say the Wraith are hungrier than ever before, that where they once took one in ten they now leave one in ten."
"Yeah, they kind of found out there were more people that they hadn't fed on out there, so they went off starvation rations," Colonel Sheppard said. "Sorry about that."
Teyla stepped on his heel.
"The Wraith and the weather come as they will," Kindauss shrugged. "We can walk through the ground as well as the sky if needs be."
"But tunnels have air in them instead of earth," Tahn said, "so isn't it still sky?"
"It's below the surface of the earth. The sky comes down to the earth and stops there."
"But what about mountains -- "
The argument continued, both Doctor McKay and Colonel Sheppard feeling the need to add their contributions to it. Teyla migrated in front of Kindauss, peering through the trees.
Eventually the trees failed. The path through the meadow was now fenced with wooden rails and posts on both sides; to one side, several large cattle grazed. On the other, three tall stones thrust out of the ground like fingers or a group of people; hair on the rough surface of one of them suggested that the cattle used it to scratch their sides. The fencing opened out into a large area, in which a village of six- and eight-sided houses made of logs laid in interlocking patterns and chinked with what might be clay or dried mud were dotted within the pale, some of them entirely covered with dirt. Around the village, people looked up, startled; there were enough of them to prove that Kindauss and Tahn were unique neither in the shape of their dress, nor in their fondness for stripes and checks, nor in their disinclination for any sort of harmony between the colors or patterns of their clothes.
"Do you think they trade for the dye, or what?" Colonel Sheppard whispered. "You don't usually get that sort of brightness out of non-mineral work."
"Visitors in peace," Kindauss called, "to see the Hostin!"
"Nice timing," one of the women called as two young men hastily ran for the largest of the bare-wood lodges, higher and with an equally high doorway. "Bayghee can actually receive them in style without having to send runners for shieldbearers."
Ronon grunted and shifted. Teyla and Colonel Sheppard nodded, slightly, acknowledging the potential military escort and moving so as to greet them peacefully without giving up all possible advantage should an unfortunate situation occur. She now found herself on the left flank.
Then the young men began to come out of the lodge, and both Colonel Sheppard's and Doctor McKay's mouths fell open. They traded half-indignant glances of astonishment and confirmation as the older Denna, whose lips and chin were clean-shaven and who had let the hair on his cheeks grow long enough to plait and brush his collarbones, leaned sideways to duck under the lintel and then slowly got to his feet on the large round and curved-slightly-upward -- shield, it must be, although Teyla had never seen anything be less like a shield without abandoning all resemblance to roof or walls -- as the two youths carrying it at shoulder height came to a stop in front of them.
"I guess that explains the menhirs," Colonel Sheppard murmured in his own language. Teyla wondered what the last word might mean; the houses? clothing? hairstyles?
"If they've managed to synthesize the enzyme," Doctor McKay answered in the same language and tone and in what Teyla slowly realized was his attempt at being tactful, "I'm afraid we'll have to let Carson know."
Once -- once, praise the Ancestors -- it would be welcome to know what her comrades were drawing their inferences from, that she might know whether a given threat were serious or a reference to a winter-eve's tale.
"I am Teyla Emmagan, of Atlantis and Athos before the Wraith came," she told the man who was probably the Hostin instead. "The Ladonna gave us your address, and I have come with my comrades Colonel Sheppard, Doctor McKay, and Ronon Dex to trade salt and perhaps other matters for foodstuffs."
Ronon shrugged off his pack, slipped one hand into it, and held up one of the smallest of the crystals Doctor Kusanagi had persuaded the maker-of-fresh-water to make of the salt it removed, not quite as long as the hand that held it.
"I am Bayghee, Hostin among the Denna, born of the Red Bull, of the Eagles, to the Jumping Mice," the man on the 'shield' said. "Come into my hogan. Sit. We will speak more of this."
The end will probably make more sense if you're familiar with these books.
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating/warnings- Very, very nearly suitable for general audiences, except for one word. Missing scene for " H. s. s. vialacteanus".
-spoilers- Uh... general for second season, I suppose.
-characters- Sheppard, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. Neither are the originals of the literary references.
-word count- 2488
-summary- Another op'ning of another trade mission -- with luck, one that will go well, although Rodney's beginning to have his doubts.
I meant to write all sorts of stuff for this challenge, and started writing in several directions at once -- and then I had a birthday, and the Bestest Little Sister in the World (aka konoha) and her Partner in Crime gave me the first-season box set of SGA, and... uh. Well. Yeah.
Meeting the Denna
- Somehow or another, Rodney McKay had once graphed, AR-1 seemed to be getting an annoyingly high percentage of three types of missions.
1: Missions that were doomed from the beginning. This, of course, included the times they'd gone through the Stargate only to be attacked by people obviously in no mood for a chat, and had to hold the savage natives off until they could dial home again.
Worse than that, although less immediately perilous, were the times when they got to the local village only to find it deserted, either abandoned in a tearing hurry or more likely strip-culled. Zelenka had said once that he had heard that the Ukraine was running a tourist service where, for a short period of time well within the limits of safe exposure, one could be escorted into the dead zone and through Chernobyl. At the time McKay'd wondered aloud what repeated exposure was likely to be doing to the guides; now, he wondered what kind of people paid money for the experience, and what kind went in over and over knowing what awaited them for mere money.
He had eventually also so classified the time they'd dialed an address and neither the Stargate nor, according to the next Daedalus sweep, the planet were there any more. Ronon said the world had been known as Charn: this seemed rather fitting for some reason he couldn't consciously remember.
2: Missions that started well and then either fizzled or outright went to hell. This included Chaya's world, anything involving the Genii ever, the time AR-1 had been anathematized when Ford wouldn't put the baby back out on the garbage heap and they wound up bringing it home and giving it to Halling's family, the iratus bug thing, and the people who believed that Asian-looking people were designed by nature to be the slaves of less strongly neotonous adults. Rodney'd found himself to be unnaturally gentle with Dr. Kusanagi for a week after that, and it had undoubtedly given him some sort of a complex.
Also Doranda.
3: Missions that started out crappy and then ended well. While in some ways an improvement over the other two, things like the volcano planet or the mess with the Aramites weren't doing anything for his blood pressure, even though being hailed as a hero had been sweet (making discoveries that changed the face of science was in his job description. Pulling miracles out of his ass, despite the widespread Atlantean delusion to the contrary, was not) and the Aramites were settling in nicely in their own new village on the mainland.
After that one, Katinka Pellegrom had added the likelihood of discovering a planet or moon called "Porthos" to the numerous betting pools she'd been running since the first year on Atlantis. Kavanagh had used to complain that McKay or Weir should really shut down such unprofessional behavior on Pellegrom's part, but honestly. Rodney McKay might have committed social solecisms in his time, some of which could possibly have been considered apparently something less than intelligent, but he had never been dumb enough to tick off someone who wore the hats of sysadmin and cook.
(In fact, he'd made his graph more readily available to Pellegrom, so that she could calculate the probabilities and by extension the odds for the books she would run.) -
When they came through the Ring of the Ancestors this time, as the pictures from the MALP machine had shown, they found themselves in a small clearing in the woods. A well-worn, not-quite broad path led from the Ring through the silent forest.
AR-1 exchanged a simple look before falling into their preferred positions for exploring hostile territory. Doctor McKay examined his scanning device intently; the rest of them scanned the trees and the underbrush with a thousand little flicks of eyes, slowly and carefully beginning to move down the path.
Then they heard the voices -- two higher-pitched voices, apparently arguing, and loud barks of noise that Teyla identified after some moments as the cry of a dog. While her people did not tame such animals, many cultures did, after the Ancestors who had seeded humans and dogs among the stars.
Presently two young brown-skinned people in brightly colored clothes came around a bend in the path and stopped. The one slightly in the lead, a boy on the verge of manhood and apparently trying to grow sideburns, stopped and gleefully said something in a harsh language full of glottal stops and plosive consonants to his companion -- very probably, given tone and expression, that he had indeed heard the Ring's opening. He wore leather slippers and vest, brightly checked baggy trousers, and a strip of bright red fabric tied around his head that held his long hair out of his eyes. He was carrying two long poles with some sort of cord attached and was casually swinging a sling with a bullet inside back and forth.
Next to him, the dog, a rather large dog as dogs went, with black and blue-grey and white-colored fur and pointed upstanding ears, stopped with one last bark. The scent of fish wafted outward.
His comrade, a woman a few years older than he -- perhaps fifteen or sixteen -- rolled her eyes and answered him sarcastically in the same language, gesturing to AR-1 with a grand sweep of one arm. She also had a sling in that hand, two fingers holding a rock against her palm; a woven-grass basket with a matching lid hung from her other arm. Her baggy striped trousers were slightly more subdued, but the intensity of the colors of the (clashing) plaid cloth folded and pinned about her torso more than made up for it. The hair on either side of her face had been pulled into a small braid before the whole had been drawn back behind her neck.
"Uh, hi," Colonel Sheppard said.
"Welcome to the place of the Denna," the young woman replied in Ring-speech, "in battle if you come in battle, in peace if you come in peace!"
"We are peaceful traders," Teyla began. "I am Teyla Emmagan, of Athos and Atlantis, and these are Colonel Sheppard, Doctor McKay, and Ronon Dex, also of Atlantis."
"Welcome in battle?" Doctor McKay interrupted her. "Why would anyone welcome a battle?"
"We haven't had a good fight for ages," the young woman said mildly, "and one can die as easily in a cattle raid and with far less honor."
"But you aren't here to fight," the boy said with a long face.
"We are here to trade," Teyla reiterated. The younger woman looked at them carefully, nodded, and tucked her sling away in the folds of her plaid.
Her young companion looked at Teyla hopefully. "Are you by any chance the people who make those they meet have sex with them or each other in order to become partners in trade?"
"Tahn!" His friend thwapped him upside the head, her expression clearly saying "He is only a boy; do not hold it against him." It was one Teyla herself had often had occasion to use.
"I'm afraid we've never yet come across them," Ronon rumbled.
"Never yet -- oh god, do you mean to say there are people like that out there?" Doctor McKay blinked. "Where? Shouldn't you have mentioned this, oh, sooner?"
"It is always the friend of a kinsman of somebody met on a trading journey who spoke with someone who had dealt with them," Teyla explained. "Most often, with someone who first embraced their lover at the behest of these famous people. Also popular are tales of those who demand visitors strip and dance to prove their sincerity, those who welcome their guests with great ceremony and then summon the Wraith to cull the guesthouses in the night, and those who will not seal a deal without all parties drinking a potion that sends their mind to wander away from their body."
"Yeah, fuck-or-die fantasies and urban legends are popular all over," Colonel Sheppard said, "although usually we don't combine the two."
The native woman shook her head, apparently reminding herself of her responsibilities. "I am Kindauss Clearsighted, born of the Steep Water, of the Corbies, to the Red Bull; and this is Tahn, son to Bayghee of the Red Bull, born of the White Rabbit, of the Corbies. Come. I will take you to the Hostin."
AR-1 exchanged glances and followed her. Tahn tucked his slingstone into a purse hanging from his leather belt and looped his sling through the dog's collar, firmly holding on to the makeshift lead.
"Catch many fish?" Colonel Sheppard asked pleasantly as the path wound through the trees.
"Some," Tahn shrugged. "We'd have caught more, only I heard the Ring belch, and we came to see if it was a war party, or maybe cattle raiders. Kindauss said that they'd have to be awfully stupid raiders to come through in broad daylight, but I said that there were plenty of awfully stupid people in the worlds -- "
"Of whom Tahn of the White Rabbit is not the least," Kindauss threw over her shoulder. "If you really thought enemies might have come through the Ring, why were we on the path?"
"Well -- I -- why were you?"
Kindauss sniffed and walked haughtily forward.
"Why do you keep your Stargate off in the forest?" Doctor McKay asked, nearly tripping over a tree root. "If this path were wider and you dug the roots out of it -- "
"It would be easier for strangers to drive cattle through, and offer less opportunities for us to ambush them on the way home," Kindauss answered.
"Besides, the last time the Wraith came, two of their darts struck trees -- bang! kapow! -- before they culled some of the trees out of their way," Tahn added, describing the action with hand motions. "We haven't really bothered to clear any out since then, in case it happens again."
"The Wraith are usually better pilots than that," Colonel Sheppard pointed out. "Depressingly."
"Maybe they were hypoglycemic Wraith," Doctor McKay offered. "Er, speaking of which, you know they've woken up now, right?"
"People told us," Tahn answered. "They say the Wraith are hungrier than ever before, that where they once took one in ten they now leave one in ten."
"Yeah, they kind of found out there were more people that they hadn't fed on out there, so they went off starvation rations," Colonel Sheppard said. "Sorry about that."
Teyla stepped on his heel.
"The Wraith and the weather come as they will," Kindauss shrugged. "We can walk through the ground as well as the sky if needs be."
"But tunnels have air in them instead of earth," Tahn said, "so isn't it still sky?"
"It's below the surface of the earth. The sky comes down to the earth and stops there."
"But what about mountains -- "
The argument continued, both Doctor McKay and Colonel Sheppard feeling the need to add their contributions to it. Teyla migrated in front of Kindauss, peering through the trees.
Eventually the trees failed. The path through the meadow was now fenced with wooden rails and posts on both sides; to one side, several large cattle grazed. On the other, three tall stones thrust out of the ground like fingers or a group of people; hair on the rough surface of one of them suggested that the cattle used it to scratch their sides. The fencing opened out into a large area, in which a village of six- and eight-sided houses made of logs laid in interlocking patterns and chinked with what might be clay or dried mud were dotted within the pale, some of them entirely covered with dirt. Around the village, people looked up, startled; there were enough of them to prove that Kindauss and Tahn were unique neither in the shape of their dress, nor in their fondness for stripes and checks, nor in their disinclination for any sort of harmony between the colors or patterns of their clothes.
"Do you think they trade for the dye, or what?" Colonel Sheppard whispered. "You don't usually get that sort of brightness out of non-mineral work."
"Visitors in peace," Kindauss called, "to see the Hostin!"
"Nice timing," one of the women called as two young men hastily ran for the largest of the bare-wood lodges, higher and with an equally high doorway. "Bayghee can actually receive them in style without having to send runners for shieldbearers."
Ronon grunted and shifted. Teyla and Colonel Sheppard nodded, slightly, acknowledging the potential military escort and moving so as to greet them peacefully without giving up all possible advantage should an unfortunate situation occur. She now found herself on the left flank.
Then the young men began to come out of the lodge, and both Colonel Sheppard's and Doctor McKay's mouths fell open. They traded half-indignant glances of astonishment and confirmation as the older Denna, whose lips and chin were clean-shaven and who had let the hair on his cheeks grow long enough to plait and brush his collarbones, leaned sideways to duck under the lintel and then slowly got to his feet on the large round and curved-slightly-upward -- shield, it must be, although Teyla had never seen anything be less like a shield without abandoning all resemblance to roof or walls -- as the two youths carrying it at shoulder height came to a stop in front of them.
"I guess that explains the menhirs," Colonel Sheppard murmured in his own language. Teyla wondered what the last word might mean; the houses? clothing? hairstyles?
"If they've managed to synthesize the enzyme," Doctor McKay answered in the same language and tone and in what Teyla slowly realized was his attempt at being tactful, "I'm afraid we'll have to let Carson know."
Once -- once, praise the Ancestors -- it would be welcome to know what her comrades were drawing their inferences from, that she might know whether a given threat were serious or a reference to a winter-eve's tale.
"I am Teyla Emmagan, of Atlantis and Athos before the Wraith came," she told the man who was probably the Hostin instead. "The Ladonna gave us your address, and I have come with my comrades Colonel Sheppard, Doctor McKay, and Ronon Dex to trade salt and perhaps other matters for foodstuffs."
Ronon shrugged off his pack, slipped one hand into it, and held up one of the smallest of the crystals Doctor Kusanagi had persuaded the maker-of-fresh-water to make of the salt it removed, not quite as long as the hand that held it.
"I am Bayghee, Hostin among the Denna, born of the Red Bull, of the Eagles, to the Jumping Mice," the man on the 'shield' said. "Come into my hogan. Sit. We will speak more of this."
The end will probably make more sense if you're familiar with these books.