One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (35 page)

See me now ranging between worlds at last. Gathered me all up, freshly descended from a top world made without sentiment or sense. When what is lost – hurled into dust against the cyclopean walls of the Universe – is gathered again, gathered up piece-by-piece until it is re-found, re-furbished and made as before but for a second time: then – through its creators’ careful reconsideration – is it even improved upon. That was Bjond: myself through travel much improved upon. Re-made almost. With the habits and methods of Old Tüpp’s rule I would have remained satisfied had not my adventures abroad brought me face-to-face with the Great Ab and Old Ball, both of whom employed systems of government that greatly eclipsed my father’s own ways. Strange how travel had opened into my brain a number of doors unwanted, unwished for. But was I to be the inheritor of a fuckle kingdom otherwise? Best to know of one’s own archaic practices; or be like the Arse People who still through superstition and menstrual fear throw out great quantities of good dinner meat just because Luno)))’s tides did in their women bring the flow early that month – aye,
and
in front of guests!

Now abroad had I ventured again this time on a royal progress through the Vanmark. Of its peoples, ways, inventions: all of these considerations I had made good measure. Now my searches did terminate here upon Asgard, I was just arrived
with my four stout Select from that dreaded sea crossing from Old Oslow. Here in Asgard walked Ashop’s noble ephedra heir. Ephedra Incarnate strides forth upon Asgard. Royal ambassador of Old Tüpp himself am I, invited by Asgard’s king to witness the Danish Law Mission as it passed through the northern lands. What changes the Danish Law Missions are bringing! Why, it is said that currents electric pass through the people when the new Danish sea laws are spoken into being. Ah me, the Danmark! Nowadays are those fast-moving Danes at the heart of all things, at the heart of each new experiment. But then, how fine had been that sleek Danish craft which transported us here from the shores of the Vanmark. Who but a churl would curl his lip at such a magical solution to such a dangerous trip? Indeed, without the exotic cargos that travel up-and-down the sea-lanes of the Danes, the lives of all but those in the remotest parts would have been considerably lessened. It is said that long ago we all were navigators of the sea, but that only those who pursued Danish excellence returned from such voyages. Nowadays, Danish Law obtains even at most sea ports on the Vanmark, and I could tell from the great size of these Danish vessels with which we had dealings that my father’s new ephedra fields, located as they were in the far-flung Vanmark, would soon oblige Ashopians to rent mast space in the Danes’ dry-storage cradles. How do I describe these Danish sea-goers, these vast balsa craft that stay afloat for months at a time? How do I describe these sea carpets, these rolling bridges that navigate the Vanquash, the Anguish, the North Sea and the Ocean? Ah me, that we had instead employed a Danish craft for our fatal journey to Abbis. Truly, I know of none in the Vanmark that loves sea travel, and none in Ashop but myself who has had need to try it.

But now, on this last day of Sober, upon arrival at Asgard did I commence promptly my account of my travels in the Vanmark, all scratched upon slate with a stylus of flint. Such an arduous task, but essential if we are to conserve records of our culture. Thus, through my accounts will future people understand that whereas the people of the Danmark were all of one type – a sea people rushing up whitewater rivers and across shark-infested coastal inlets, their longboats teeming with livestock and fine wares – the people of the Vanmark were, in complete contradistinction, a heterodox bunch: farmers, cattle breeders, trekkers, fishermen, oyster eaters, flint miners, ditch diggers, wine makers, whose so-called Fedus remained firmly in place only whilst its ephedra crop was guaranteed; but who worked together and struggled through as best they could in these problematic times when inter-communication could not be guaranteed. Indeed, the most inspirational and recurring themes of my entire progress throughout the Vanmark were the ceaseless struggles of the Vanish leaders just to keep their Fedus together. What a thankless task – but what an inspiring idea! For this union has enabled the Vanish populations to share in all the wide varieties of produce offered by the Vanmark’s rich geography, to taste the wares of distant lands, to wear threads sewn by others’ hands, to be an oyster eater but to know the ways of cattle breeders, to trade your Vanish cutting flints and blades dug up at home for fish and meat and river reeds for twine: all taste the benefits that ’cross the Vanmark dare to roam!

And yet despite these many advantages, what antagonists also live and benefit from their Vanmark locations! When first my Ashopian Delegation arrived in the south of the Fedus, I had furious words with Old Rouge, whose royal self-stylings and utterances plainly aped my father and the Old Ones. Of all
the Vanish I did meet, this ignoble wine maker did most disturb me. For he rules his Van Rouge with a shamanic fervour. When the Van Rouge drink their red wine, it is said that Old Rouge paints his own cheeks red, then whips his people up until a red mist comes over them. In this red rage, then does their king set them upon the world. Some say the Van Rouge have killed their old people as they sleep, some say they have torn off the heads of babies. But Old Rouge belongs not to the Old Ones, and those are no traditions of ours! What antagonists lurk herein unchallenged!

Of course there are the Boers whom every ephedra farmer fears, whose dust clouds turned their neighbours’ own skies black, whose rustling of each other’s cattle through some Vanish farmer’s land make flat his fields and soon become their track. Ah me, that the Boers would curtail their reckless ways! When my Ashopian Delegation arrived at Grime’s Graves, the people of the Fence had taken up cudgels against the Boerish In-trekkers that hoofed it up-and-down the Linkin Land and reduced to a prairie dust the landscape around. When my Ashopian Delegation arrived to explore the kingdom of the Van Dykes, their entire population was under siege from Boerish In-trekkers, who had taken such liberties across Vanish lands that miles and miles of carefully constructed sea walls had been pounded into destruction through sheer wanton thoughtlessness. In all of the Vanmark, who but another Boerish leader could be called upon to admonish correctly those erring In-trekkers? Thus, only through this deadly slow political process could the Van Dykes expect to seek restitution. What a thankless task!

Perhaps I am too tired now to make fair account of my travels through the Vanmark? No, not too tired. But too saddened I am to linger long upon any exploit enjoyed therein. For my travel
adventures, my walks abroad, have too often revealed those aforementioned flaws in my own father’s habits and methods of government. Unlike the Great Ab of Abbis, who rules by the ancient laws and measures, my father Old Tüpp uses his secrets of Longitude
against
his people. Unlike Old Ball of N. Abbadon, who aggrandises his own secrets by co-opting the minds of every great thinker in his kingdom, my father Old Tüpp uses his sacred knowledge to set up intimidating structures, grand feats of civil engineering all across the land.

But by far the worst decision of my father’s reign was his obstinate refusal to embrace the horticulture of Old Dam of Ashop. Taking for granted for too long her lodgers, her beavers, her dams, Old Tüpp never reckoned on her higher value. And so through indifference and thoughtless neglect did my father lose for Ashop its finest export. Successfully courted by the Vanmark’s most holy ones, thus Old Dam did flee Ashop with her methods and priesthood to set up her temples where she would be appreciated, even worshipped. Now has her horticulture obtained such a hold in the northern lands that the Danish fleets rely on her beaver dams, the fleets of N. Abbadon too! Now has her horticulture obtained such a hold in the northern minds that even sacred caves are becoming vegetable temples. And yet, when I journeyed to the throne of Old Dam, with pride and with longing did she talk of Ashop. Her manner of speaking, her rituals, feasts, even her holies are styled after Ashop! And all of her speeches, her grand declamations, were warmly directed at this Prince of Ashop. Of my father’s complacent rejection she would not speak, though plain was it, clear was it that still she burned. On the third night of feasting, however, as though to impress upon me further how great had been Old Dam’s loss to Ashop, did the whole Beaver Temple join our royal company
for a grand and intoxicating celebration. Then, midway through that great rejoicing started up the ancient chant of Old Dam and her Lodgers, now staged for Ashop’s Prince Bjond.

Now, on this last day of Sober, is my account of the Vanmark concluded. Now shall my studies in Asgard commence. Thus will future people understand that Bjond, Prince of Ashop, did – through travels and adventures abroad – make by comparison better judgement of his own lands and people, thereby better to rule that land. More. Let all future kings and scholars and lawmen and holy ones know of these times – the Vanmark, the Danmark, the Kingdoms, the islands – through these careful accounts wrote upon slate, and always reproduced right clear, and in the righteous style of Prince Bjond, heir of Ashop.

Asgard rises out of the North Sea, a bustling island ten miles by twenty, guarding the Gate of Skaggerak and all of the sea-lanes directly north of the Boers’ brutal Kennat Coast. There it was at his hilltop fortress – also named Asgard – that Old Oss ruled for centuries un-numbered. He was perhaps the most successful of all the Old Ones, my father Old Tüpp excepted – and certainly wielded most clout. For Old Oss it was who had in Antiquity named every large four-footed mammal of use to humanity, his mysterious equine understandings brought together by the rituals of the Ostlers – priests of the sacred stables, who practised grooming and who had collected together all of the Sage-King’s sayings and doings. Some say it was no more than a dialectal shift that turned the king into Old Ass. Others say it was his foolish decisions. But as providence deemed that I should be there to witness his demise, so now shall I describe to you the final days of one of the Old Ones.

Now, none has suggested that Old Oss had Danu blood, none would dare. But as one of the Old Ones, Old Oss and his island had – like Old Tüpp in Ashop – been permitted to remain un affiliated and outside the laws both of the Vanmark Fedus
and
of the Sea Empire of the Danmark. So even the least cautious of the Sage-King’s High Ostlers were shocked at the cavalier manner in which Old Oss invited the Danish Inter-Mission
to tour among his Asgard horse herds that fateful sunny day in late Sober. For, although the novelty of these Danish missions had long been known to entrance more credulous chiefs of those remoter coastal Vanish populations – always impressed by the sheer speed with which the Danes could raise a lawhill – no leader of the stature of Old Oss, High King of Asgard, had ever been so slack as to allow his own judgement to be passed directly into the hands of a Far-Reigner. Yet these were precisely the actions of Old Oss on that fateful Ember day. Had he been entranced by these modernistic supernauts, these wayfarers whose porpoise-straight boats traversed so effortlessly the un-navigable waters of the Skaggerak? Or did Old Oss intend to rescind his power only temporarily in order to a-judge how different were the Odin’s decisions from his own? Whichever is the case, Old Oss announced – before his entire Ostler priesthood and elite horse-mounted guard – that the Odin of the Danish Inter-Mission would this day be called upon to make several instant judgements of serious local political importance. Murmurs of disapproval there were none at first, just a collective heaving and a collective sighing and a stellar cast of 2,000 Ostler priests and dignitaries and mounted warriors steadfastly fixing their eyes upon their parade ground. For Old Oss had ruled in Asgard longer even than Old Tüpp in Ashop. A deputation of leaders from every far-flung district of the Island arrived at the throne of Old Oss, but impossible it was for them to petition their holy Sage-King and divine leader who, the Ostlers concluded, was fully intent on directing his own demise.

Next day, with considerable calm and diplomacy, the Odin – speaking on behalf of Old Oss himself – invited this entire elite assembly of Asgard’s 2,000 dignitaries, administrators and Holy Ostlers to follow his own party down to the seashores below,
where – as a Lawman of the Danish Sea Peoples – the Odin declared that he felt more disposed to dispense good judgement. Without fuss, the great multitude – led by Old Oss himself – descended to the beach, upon whose flat sands a great and handsome lawhill had been thrown up according to the dimensions of the Danmark. Of course, the arriving dignitaries – all utterly ignorant of the size of the Danish fleet – assumed that this great ‘hull’ as the Danes termed it had been raised entirely of earth in the brief time that the Odin’s party had been on the island, little knowing that the Danes had merely inverted one of their empty ships then covered it with soil, sand and stones to a depth of several inches. Indeed, so impressed were Asgard’s dignitaries that Old Oss immediately grasped the calamitous nature of his too-generous decision. But he bit his lip and held his peace, for the Sage-King knew what next must happen the following day. Some say that Old Oss sacrificed himself to himself, that he recognised in the new practices of the Odin those truths of which he too should have become a practitioner, and that the forthrighteous Danish had – on that day upon Asgard – forever rendered obsolete all of the old ways. Thereafter, judgement would be for the Danes alone. Some say. But personally, I believe that it was the genius and charms of the Danish Law that scuttled Old Oss – intrigued and charmed him. Perhaps his time might not have come at all, perhaps. But this is what happened next …

At daybreak, the Odin stood atop the summit of a real lawhill, one fashioned especially for this occasion upon a natural islet in the middle of a freshwater loch, about three miles inland. It was accessed across a shingle causeway that was said to have been laid down in the time of Giants. But the lawhill itself had only just been thrown up overnight – and with expert precision – by
gangers already on the island, mysteriously. Old Oss and his great retinue arrived presently and settled down in preparation for the day’s good judgements. But nobody had thus far paid any attention whatsoever to the other two officers of the Inter-Mission, both of whom now leapt into action.

Old Oss plead? Immediately, the retinue of Old Oss prolapsed into a mass of flailing bodies intent upon doing each law officer great harm, but the old Sage-King himself sat firmly in his seat awaiting good judgement, seemingly oblivious to the noisome threats and fusillades of flingable armour, hats and gauntlets that his royal retinue volleyed at Liko and Rhot. But at last, only when the rabble refused to die down, did their remote
Sage-King shush them regally until there was quiet and the two officers of the Inter-Mission could continue.

Now, Old Oss turned whiter than any ghost, for he knew this was his Come-Uppance at last. For not even the sagacious Juddish lawmen of the Ash-Kennat-Tenancy had dared interpolate Danish points-of-law into their own practices for fear of Danish reprisals. And here was an Old One sneaking around the N. coasts with Oslow as his own personal husting! One day here, one day there. Come and go as you please. Now Old Oss stood up full-of-fear but still comprehended not the calamitousness of his own situation. Instead, the Sage-King stood up proudly and turned to his retinue of important personages, whom he now addressed with true gravity.

And thus, in defence of their High Liege now laid low, did Old Oss’s legendary lawman – Garda Law himself – step forth upon the lawhill. Then he recited the previous one hundred of Old Oss’s most important judgements. But knowing nothing of the
Odinist complexities of the Danmark, Garda Law – himself tipsy with the privilege of making account to the Odin – chose not the most appropriate of Oss’s judgements to impress the Danish Mission. No. Each new example that he burst forth was more whimsical than the last – ‘a thorn just snagged my robe, therefore you must hang’. Until at last the great ruler of Asgard, listening in horror to Garda Law and fearing the worst, himself took on the equine appearance of his own charges. And now he hung his head low.

Then the unhappy throng of Asgard’s gathered lawmen and holy ones – the Ostlers, the barristers, the mounted warriors and Liege-men – set up a tragic lowing for their great One now brought to heel. Now the Odin ascended the lawhill from three different directions, each time returning to the level ground of the beach. Then, on his third ascent, did he lead Old Oss and set the guilty one upon his knees atop the summit. Before the Sage-King even could prepare for death, the Odin took a great handled implement and wellied the very life out of the Old One’s head. Wump. Then, even as Old Oss writhed in his death
throes, the great cutting began. Old Oss felt nothing more, though; such was the Odin’s mastery. And within the hour was the body of Old Oss flayed of its skin, and set upon the Odin’s shoulders and named ‘The Cape of Asgard’.

Across the island the funeral retinue now trudged, at its head the grand en-shrouded figure of the Odin marched alone, behind him the members of the Danish Inter-Mission, behind them the unseated holy ones and dignitaries of the island, behind them the Ostlers and mounted warriors, behind them the orphans. At the tail end of this funeral retinue marched four black stallions, all plumed with feathers of indescribable blue, dragging a great sled: upon it the heaped remains of Old Oss. This heap at first only the scald crows did tear at, but the hours and the march sucked more from the skies, until – upon reaching the sea cliffs of Asgard – so the gulls and seabirds also joined in the feeding frenzy. Upon viewing this cruel scene, so did the Ostlers all marching together at last strike up their lament for their Old One fallen.

By dawn of the second day, we had traversed the island twice, and the funeral party had taken on many tribal aspects; here warriors in deep conversation, there holy ones chanting together, the many and various divisions of marchers ranging across several hilltops. Now, from my anonymous position in the procession, I began to question my role, my place, my grand design. What
were the Old Ones? Why were we tolerated? Only in the presence of the Odin had Old Oss’s judgements seemed worthy of ridicule. Why? How would the judgements of my father Old Tüpp stand up to Danish scrutiny? Brr, I felt my whole body quaver. Try as I might, I could not now return to my former thoughts, and I struck up a conversation with a vishop, one of the fish-headed priests from Vishgard who happened to have been on Asgard during this upheaval.

Thus through the harsh actions of the Odin upon the beach at Asgard had I begun my kind’s first great leap into uncertainty. No longer truly Bjond was I, where next for me? Now, I walked more briskly than any others in the funeral retinue and soon passed among the mile-long throng between the lawmen, the warriors, the holy ones, the relatives, those marchers all, between Old Oss’s remains dragged at the rear upon the sled and – far
off at the front – the striding Odin still clad in ‘The Cape of Asgard’, but now bedecked with garlands of flowers. Behind him strode Liko and Rhot, behind them two more officers of the Danmark, with whom I now struck up a conversation. The Asgard landscape hereabouts was as rough as an old dwarf’s neck, and treeless too – nothing could grow in these penetrating winds aswipe the Skaggerak. But as conversations between members of the retinue dwindled along this perishing north coast to a mere Ur-rumble, so did I make now my boldest move, worthy indeed of an Heir to the throne of Ashop: I approached the Odin himself and walked now alongside him at the head of Old Oss’s funeral retinue.