Agent of the Terran Empire Author:Poul Anderson It is the common fate of empires to grow old and jaded: Rome, Byzantium, Britain, America, and so on to the Empire of Terra itself, each has near the end succumbed to the same weary "sophistication" that allows a warlord of Merseia to make mock a race whose star-conquering ancestors found the Merseians pre-technic barbarians huddled in stone p... more »iles--and saved them from extinction. Flandry himself has come to understand that there is no more point to all his victories than that a few trillion of his fellow creatures may live out their lives before the coming of the Long Night of galactic barbarism. That he will not have shortened that coming Dark Age one bit--only postponed it. That the barbarians always win in the end, and are always followed by a new round of civilization. . .« less